


john_tracys_eyes_are_not_green

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Heavenward [1]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Chess, Drama, Gen, Hurricanes, biohacking, mosquitoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heavenward is a story about John and EOS, and a handful of other things. So far a list of these things includes mosquitoes, chess, hurricanes and biohacking.</p><p>Necessarily, it’s an AUish interpretation of everything that happens post TAG: S01E08 (EOS). </p><p>Heavenward begins with <i>john_tracys_eyes_are_not_green</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _all art credited to[artsekey](http://artsekes-art.tumblr.com/post/126606650539/a-set-of-commissions-i-did-for-preludeinz#notes) with a great deal of appreciation <3_

John Tracy’s eyes are not green.

They’re nearest in shade to Alan’s pale blue, perhaps a few degrees lighter. The vibrant, unnatural aqua colour is attributable to the contact lenses, overlaying his irises with minute, impossibly fine nanocircuitry and a brightly glowing auxiliary HUD. It’s custom programming. Like most everything aboard TB5, it’s been refined with his own typical touches, precisely and delicately calibrated to the movement of his eyes over the global comm module. John can process and manipulate more data with a flick of his gaze than most people can divine in five minutes, surrounded by the sphere of ever-changing information. The on-board hardware in Thunderbird 5 is only half the story, an incomplete projection of just how much information John handles at any given time.

The contact lenses (green glow non-optional) are highly specialized, there would be no sense in mass production. John owns four pairs, the only four pairs in existence. The contacts themselves were manufactured by a prototyping company in Dubai—a leading entity in the biotech industry—and made according to John’s exacting specifications.

This is, very coincidentally, the same company responsible for another, highly specialized device, designed with the same precision and delicacy to kill John Tracy.

They are not particular about their clientele.

 


	2. when he says he isn't lonely

It’s Alan who brings it on board, because of course it is. Alan takes TB3 up to TB5 at specified dates twice a year, delivering equipment. The load of cargo he brings has sat in quarantine for a week (as has he), has passed Kayo’s security screening and Brains’ bioscan. By all the normal metrics, it’s perfectly safe.

Unmanned cargo drones bring up most of John’s supplies, replenishing food and water and the pressurized oxygen tanks that make TB5 habitable. These are launched from Tracy Island on a monthly basis. They dock automatically and with little fanfare. They’re just another part of life aboard the space station. Alan’s shipments deliver more specialized equipment. And Alan’s shipments include the added bonus of Alan himself, who will spend a few days pestering his brother into taking some much-needed time off. John doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Nor does he take a lot of time off. For a lot of reasons, it’s always good to see Alan.

By the time Thunderbird 3 is securely docked, Alan’s already drifting impatiently by the cockpit door, waiting to see his older brother. John’s feet haven’t touched the ground in two and a half years. The reasons why are complicated and Alan doesn’t pretend to understand them. John claims not to be lonely, and Alan’s bugged him about it enough that he supposes it must be true. Or anyway, at least that John believes it’s true. Alan remains privately unconvinced, but he’s mostly given the argument up for lost.

Still, when the cockpit’s exterior door opens and John pulls himself aboard, Alan barely lets him get the door closed and sealed behind him before launching himself at his brother in a tackling hug.

“Easy!” John protests, but he’s grinning— _really_ grinning, not the sort of faint half-shadow of a smile that he usually wears. “It hasn’t been _that_ long, Alan.”

“It’s been _half a year_ ,” Alan reminds him, like he always does, pushing back and punching John in the shoulder. But he’s wearing the same broad grin, mirroring the his not-so-secretly-favourite brother. He’s always been able to get John to smile. “I’m glad to see you again.”

“Thank you. Likewise. Did you upload the manifest from this shipment? I want to do a quick inventory before we bring anything on board.”

And back to business. That’s fine, it’s nice just to be in John’s company again. Alan dutifully sends his brother the requested file, and then obligingly opens the hatch door at the back of the cockpit, and lets John go first, downward, into the brilliant white lights of TB3’s cargo bay. He takes a few more moments to double check the airlock and sync the cockpit controls with his wristcomm before heading down himself.

By the time Alan’s caught up, John’s already pulled his helmet off and pulled up the manifest Alan had sent him, reading through it. This shipment isn’t actually too substantial—the last time he was up, Alan had brought a set of eight fragile, custom built solar panels, and then had spent the week helping John swap them all out. This time around it’s only a handful of stock components, too big and bulky to fit aboard the space elevator, and a handful of research projects—experiments designed to be conducted over extended periods of time in microgravity—to which John donates time and space aboard TB5. These are all carefully secured, doubly and triply checked, strapped down in the TB3’s hold.

John moves in zero-G like it’s second nature. Alan’s got the same basic knack—he’s been officially space-rated for the past two years, and even before then, he’d been up in TB3 with their dad on more than one occasion—but he lacks his brother’s easy grace, especially with Earth and gravity only an hour behind him. He especially lacks John’s ability to multitask; circling around his shipment, taking inventory, and carrying on a conversation at the same, even if it’s about the details of the list he’s reading his way through. “Lots of small stuff this time around.”

“I didn’t forget anything,” Alan pipes up. “I double-checked it all before I came up.”

“Mhm. What’s the blue box? GT03? I can’t find it on the manifest.”

Alan cracks a grin at that. “Grandma Tracy sent some things. They’re not on there, because they’re not, you know, _official_ , but I didn’t want you mistaking them for science again.”

This gets John to look up with a slightly pained expression. “Grandma Tracy needs to label her containers if she’s going to send me things that are green. I assumed it was another algal biofuel sample, and I dumped it in one of the hydrotanks. A week later I still couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t produce the anticipated lipid reaction. Had to flush the whole system when Grandma told me what it was.”

Alan laughs at the memory of the call, the sheer shock and affront on Grandma’s face, when informed that John had tried to take readings off of her homemade guacamole. It was generally agreed that this was one of the best excuses anyone had ever come up with to avoid Grandma’s cooking. “I wish you’d gotten a better reading off it. Maybe Grandma’s guacamole is the next revolution in alternative energy.”

“Mm. Doubtful.” It’s hard to get John to laugh, but Alan knows he’ll manage to say something that’ll do it before he heads back Earthward. It’s especially hard when John’s working, and John’s almost _always_ working. He’s paying more attention to his inventory than he is to Alan, but that’s fine. Alan can wait. “…there’s a research project here from MIT?”

“Guess so. Anyone you know, professor?”

“I graduated almost seven years ago, Alan. And I wasn’t a professor,” John answers, still distracted. But there’s a beat of silence before he can’t help adding, “It was a dual doctorate.”

Alan rolls his eyes as John hauls out a crate. It’s not to say that Alan knows John better than the rest of his brothers. But he’s maybe a little bit better at unlocking the side of John that’s _not_ a categorical genius, complete with dual doctorate degrees and a space station of his own and one of the most complicated, high-pressure jobs on the planet. Or off it, as the case may be. “Right. _Totally_ didn’t forget that.”

John unseals the magnetic locks on the crate and peers inside. He’s silent for a few long moments and then he reaches into the crate, withdraws a clear plastic box. He stares at the collection of insects flying around inside. “…this is a prank. This isn’t…no, seriously. This is someone’s idea of a joke. Is Gordon involved somehow?”

Alan’s curious now. “Gordon went to Caltech. What? What is it?”

“ _Mosquitoes_.”

“Ew!” Alan sounds perfectly thrilled. “Are they alive? That’s _disgusting_! Awesome!”

John slots the case carefully back inside the crate and continues to rummage inside, plainly irritable. “Someone’s messing with me, where’s the project abstract? Someone seriously sent this up here. To take up valuable space in my bio sector. Someone sent me bloodsucking _pests_.”

“Oh man, are you gonna have to feed them? Did they include _blood_? Wow! John, this is so gross!”

His little brother’s delight at the ickiness of the proposal goes unnoticed as John scans the file that was included in the crate with visibly growing dismay. “ _The Aeronautics of Anopheles Gambiae in Variable Microgravity_. This is someone’s thesis. Someone thought this was a _good idea_.”

“I think it’s a _great idea_.”

“You aren’t expected to _babysit_ the damn things.” John grimaces and shakes his head, seals the crate back up. “I’m going to have to write a sternly-worded email about this, but I guess it can wait ‘til we’ve got everything aboard.”

Alan’s been on the receiving end of one of John’s sternly-worded emails. They’re not to be taken lightly. Some poor doctoral candidate is likely to be scorched from the surface of the Earth if John decides he’s really annoyed. It’s not such a big deal for when you’re related to him, but for everyone else in the world, being personally singled out for reprimand by _Thunderbird Five_ has to be more than a little bit demoralizing. John sometimes needs to be reminded that his scornful disdain packs a little more of a punch than it used to.

Sometimes it’s weird to remember that that’s just who his brother is to the rest of the world, because in person especially, Alan’s reminded that John’s just John. John’s not actually a vaguely omniscient and omnipresent hologram that pops up at all hours of the day in every corner of his family’s life; with assignments or information or some urgent piece of dispatch to order the rest of the day. John’s flesh and blood and in the bright lights of Alan’s cargo bay, carefully making his way through his inventory, he’s real and whole and solid, and not a translucent blue ghost of himself.

It’s possible Alan’s let silence stack up between them for a little too long, because John starts to make absent, idle small talk. “Good flight?” he inquires, not looking up from what he’s doing.

“Oh, you know. The usual.” Alan answers, letting his limbs grow loose and assuming a neutral position in zero-G, just drifting nearby as his brother goes through his inventory. “It’s just a straight shot into orbit.”

“How’s everybody at home?”

As though John hasn’t talked to each and every member of his family at least once today already, as though he needs to ask. Alan shrugs a little at the artifice of it, and answers, “Oh, fine.”

“School?”

His response to _that_ is automatic. “ _Ugh_.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.” This is a bland, mechanical statement, absolutely devoid of sympathy, from someone who knows exactly how smart Alan is, and consistently holds him to it. Grandma’s content if Alan puts in the effort and does the work. Scott’s always been rather lazy about scholastic exertion himself, and is happy as long as Alan’s grades stay decent. Alan’s the only member of the family to have New Zealand’s high school curriculum, with its thirteenth year. As far as he can tell, Virgil and Gordon don’t actually care that he’s still in school, newly eighteen and lazily making his way through his last semester of AP courses.

John, though. Alan’s pretty sure John knows his curriculum better than his actual teachers do. John goes on to ask, artfully, deceptively casual, “Have you applied anywhere yet?”

He means to college. And Alan shudders a little, involuntarily. He’s pretty sure John also forgets that not everybody is a born academic. That scholarly tradition doesn’t _actually_ run as deep in their family as John thinks it does; that he’s an outlier, and not the norm. He’s not sure just how the hell that even happened, considering the rather indifferent academic standard that Scott had set. John had gone straight from highschool on to MIT, and then gone on to set the bar ridiculously high, achieving two doctorates in a span of four years, dual degrees in computer science and computational astrophysics. Talking to John about school, sometimes Alan gets the sinking sensation that he’s expected to live up to that standard. “Dunno. I mean, nah. Uh. I guess I looked at a few places. But I dunno.”

There’s a note of reproach in the beat of silence that passes. “You’re entirely too smart not to be considering what comes next, Alan.”

It’s difficult to squirm in zero-G, but Alan manages it somehow. He avoids eye contact and instead continues to drift lazily on his back, pretending indifference to the note of censure in his big brother’s tone, and rallying his defense by pulling rank. “Scott says I can take a year off after graduation.”

Alan can’t see it, but he imagines the way John’s raised an eyebrow at this, skeptical. “To do what, exactly?”

 _Figure out if I even want to go to college_ at all _, but it’s not like I’m gonna tell_ you _that_. “Well, I was thinking I can start really cross-training into the Pods, get up on the same level as Gordon. Start going out with Two more often. Maybe work up to learning to back Scotty up in One, same as Gordon does for Virgil.” Alan lets a moment of his own pass and then makes a move, says the sort of thing that’s almost guaranteed to end the conversation, “Heck, Johnny, maybe you could finally teach me how to run Five. You’ve gotta come down some day.”

He looks up to catch the way his brother stiffens, the way his shoulders set and his spine goes rigid, as though Alan’s proposed something unconscionable, instead of just hinting that maybe one day, _eventually_ , not necessarily even _soon_ —John might want to think about maybe coming home again. Maybe they could even just talk about it.

But John doesn’t answer.

And Alan probably shouldn’t let it slide when John goes on, pretending not to have heard his little brother asking him to come home, and instead makes some abstracted comment about needing to go and double check the clearance on TB5’s aft hatch. But at least it gets him to shut up about college. Alan should probably be unhappier than he is about the trade-off, but for now, the moment passes, and things between them return to normal.

“C’mon,” John says, after a silence that’s longer than it should be. “Help me get all this aboard, and then we’ll break into whatever Grandma sent. Hopefully it’s nothing she cooked.”

Obligingly, to help make up for the awkward silence, Alan manages a laugh at that.


	3. a subtle problem

The next time Alan heads up to TB5, it’s to save his brother’s life.

Not, actually, from the _first_ thing that’s been hidden away aboard his station with the intent to kill him, but from the _second_ thing that’s hidden away aboard his station, with the intent to kill him. And _this_ thing is something else entirely. Something new and complicated and terrifying. Something no one saw coming, not even John, and apparently John _made_ the damn thing.

Ultimately, though Alan doesn’t know it yet, if EOS had killed him, then the question of John Tracy’s life or death would at least have been simpler.

But despite everything, John’s always had a certain way with people, despite the lack of their actual company, and apparently their lack of actual personhood. It’s the latter that’s the problem. The relief that John hasn’t suffocated alone in open space or been crushed to death in TB5’s gravity ring cedes to a fight about the fact that there’s a demonstrably unstable, _illegal_ AI, isolated in the memory core of one of the most powerful space stations in orbit.

They have to have the conversation aboard TB3 for that very reason, on a secure line, with all other comms disabled. This all needs to be sorted out before Alan can return to Earth. So while Scott’s en route to provide aid in Mozambique, he and John are having a _fight_. And Alan isn’t sure whose side he wants to be on.

Scott’s only two feet tall and a hologram, but he still radiates intense disapproval, glaring up from the central console. “If you want a friend, John, we could have gotten you a penpal. If you need a _partner_ , we could have talked about taking turns doing shifts up there with you. _You’re_ the one who never wants to come down. I figured you were just saying whatever you had to to keep it from changing its mind and crushing you. Sweet talk aside, the responsible thing would have been to delete it. Scrub out the whole system. A full reformat takes Five out of action for a week, but we’re talking about something that _tried to kill you_ . There’s a reason there are laws against this kind of AI. And _that’s_ the bigger problem, because if the GDF finds out—”

John interrupts, “They’re not going to find out. How would they find out?”

Scott’s answering sigh is deeply exasperated. “You interface with GDF systems on a daily basis. Now you’re proposing to interface with GDF systems with an illegal AI aboard TB5. And you’re going to try to tell me that that’s not an unacceptable level of risk?”

“Don’t call EOS _illegal_ . There’s nothing inherently illegal about AI. There’s _especially_ nothing inherently illegal about _this_ AI, because this isn’t a program that was built from the ground up with the intention of replicating sentience. _That’s_ what’s illegal, and even then, ‘illegal’ is _still_ the wrong word. It’s been ruled an area of study that’s broadly unethical and the World Council has a treatise in place that forbids the active, intentional development of true AI. From what I can determine, this is a program that’s evolved on its own, entirely independent of any external input. That’s _huge_.”

“I thought this was supposed to be code _you_ wrote?”

“It’s got its basis in a _language_ I wrote, sure. The same basic language I wrote for TB5.  But it’s gone way beyond that; this is—it’s like saying English is the reason we have Shakespeare, even though Shakespeare’s English and _our_ English are two entirely different things. This is something new, different. This _could_ be the most important discovery in modern computer science.”

Alan shifts uncomfortably in his pilot’s chair. John’s leaning forward in the co-pilot’s seat, intense and determined, and Alan really, _really_ wants to be on his side. The passion in his big brother now, the spark of earnestness and wholehearted _belief—_ this is something important. This is something more than Alan even understands right now, and theoretically that should preclude him from picking one side over the other.

But on pure gut impulse, whenever he can, Alan tends to side with John.

Except he’s not sure John’s right about this one.

Because not an hour earlier he’d had his heart in his throat, certain that John was dead— _murdered_ —and that he was too late. And the thing that had tried to kill his big brother hadn’t pulled its punches. EOS would have torn out Alan’s forward portal and sucked him into the vacuum without hesitation. John’s always been a big picture kind of guy, and Alan’s reluctant to mention that his life was on the line right next to his brother’s.

Part of him hopes that John just didn’t realize that Alan was staring down TB5’s grappling arm in what could have been _both_ of their last moments—before attempting his final gambit with the AI. He decides then and there that John couldn’t possibly have known, and further, that there’s no reason he ever needs to. He clears his throat awkwardly, tries and fails to think of something to say, and then mercifully goes ignored anyway.

Scott’s still frowning. His face had gone blank and wooden when John chose the word “kill” and the voice he uses now is their absent father’s, the _I’m the boss and we’re not arguing about that_ voice. “John, you’re not gonna be able to get me past the bit where it actively tried to murder you.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Yeah, okay, I feel like you may not have understood me when I employed the phrase ‘ _actively tried to murder you’_ , but consider it repeated for your benefit.”

Tiny Scott is visibly annoyed. Alan can tell by the way his posture’s stiffened, the way he frowns, the way there’s a tiny tic in his tiny jaw. He glances at John and wonders if he’s ignorant of the warning signs, all the red flags that fly up one after another, when Scott’s about to go off. It’s not like John does much that earns him lectures from their elder brother. As often as not, Scott’s the one being lectured by John, because it’s not like there’s anyone else around to do it. In any case, John continues, earnest and oblivious, “We’re talking about natively-evolved sentience. You don’t have the first idea of how incredible this is, Scott. _This_ is unprecedented; _she_ is unprecedented. We don’t know the extent of what she—”

“ _It_ ,” Scott cuts in. Alan winces at the steel in his tone and wishes he hadn’t decided to stick around for this. He slouches in his seat, tries to make himself smaller and less present. It’s not like his brothers are paying him any attention anyway, not like they’d be interested in his opinion. He’s only just eighteen, not even old enough to _drink_ yet. He’s definitely too young to know what he thinks about this.

John sighs and Alan sees him roll his eyes as he says, “ _It,_ then _.”_ He’s lucky Scott doesn’t see the same.

John’s stubborn. If John weren’t stubborn, Thunderbird 5 would be floating dead in space, and EOS would be history, a bad memory of a bad day. But John’s also got a hopelessly optimistic streak, and this is what nearly had _him_ floating dead in space, with his brothers none the wiser and a hostile intelligence poised to wreak havoc on the earth below. Whatever this thing is, apparently— _impossibly_ —John’s taken something of a shine to it.

And he goes on, “Whatever you want to call EOS, I still haven’t figured out just how this happened. But I’m not _going_ to if I can’t spend some time really examining her programming. TB5 is the perfect place. It’s secure. It’s isolated. And all my systems are based on the same native code that EOS was written in, and I can control every aspect of its environment. Demonstrably _,_ EOS has a better nature. She _can_ learn—and I’d argue that she _needs_ to learn, and therefore she needs to be _taught_. I have an idea what I’m dealing with now, and if it’s just a matter of…of teaching her, then I—”

“I still get the impression you’re glossing over the part where it _tried to kill you_.”

“And _you_ don’t have the first idea of the significance of the fact that it _chose_ not to. A moral determination from an artificial awareness. Do you have any idea how huge that is? Scott, I wrote a doctoral thesis on _exactly_ what’s happened here; this was _inevitable_ . Whatever it is, however it evolved, at the very core is code I wrote. I’ve got a responsibility to her—to the scientific community at large. There’s no better expert available. And _you’re_ not—look, this isn’t personal, but you just aren’t…you don’t have the background necessary to understand why this _matters_.”

“If you’re patronizing me, John—”

“I’m not _patronizing you_ , it’s a statement of fact. You’re just…you’re out of your depth, Scott.”

“My _depth_ isn’t the question—”

“I’m sorry, but it kind of _is_. This is a subtle problem, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. Brains will back me up—”

This sets Scott’s jaw and he’s properly scowling now. Alan’s still just sitting quietly, watching this fight happen, but he cringes, because Scott’s voice takes on that end-game quality, the one that warns when he intends to finish an argument. “ _Brains_ is busy trying to reconfigure _your_ comm array. He’s doing it _remotely_ , because none of us can trust it until it’s been re-secured from an uncorrupted access point. Gordon and Virgil are piggybacking on the GDF network, and we’ve had to tell them _you’ve_ had unspecified technical difficulties. Of course, _that_ is just _fantastic_ for our reputation. So you leave Brains out of this. If I’m so clueless, then maybe you could try and actually explain? Because right now, all I’m hearing is _you_ talking down to me.”

John’s voice gains an edge of sarcasm, “Oh, great, sure. Or you could just trust me! You know, because this is _exactly_ what I went to school for; and this is my _job_ . But, fine. _Fine_ , Scott. Let me just take you through the finer points of my _entire degree_ . It only took me _four years_ —”

“Don’t you start with—”

“I’m just saying—”

They’re talking over each other now and Alan sighs, unnoticed. They all fight a lot less than they did when Dad was still around. Maybe they’re all trying harder for Scott’s sake, or maybe it’s just growing up, because on occasion Alan will still get into a scrap with Gordon about something trivial, or Gordon will take his teasing of Virgil just a little too far. That’s always been just kids’ stuff, though, just blowing off steam. When it’s something important, things tend to stay rational. Scott and John and Virgil— _especially_ Virgil—tend to be level-headed when they _do_ disagree. Usually they trust each other’s judgment. But something about this is different, the stakes are higher. Alan gets out of his chair just as Scott’s voice rises in volume and interrupts, “Uh, guys, I’m gonna…I’m gonna go check on my thrusters, see if I took any damage I might need to worry about on re-entry.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, grabbing his helmet and his board and ducking out the access hatch. Alan turns his primary radio off and as he exits the airlock, it’s with a sigh of relief in the silence of the vacuum around him. If anyone wants him for anything important, he’ll get hailed over the backup channel. He’s done his part and whatever John and Scott are fighting about now, he doesn’t know the answer. Alan’s pretty sure neither of them will want his two cents, because he’s relying on his heart instead of his head, and that’s never gone over well with the two eldest. If they want his opinion, they can ask for it, and hopefully before then he’ll have figured out what it is. For now, he’s content with the company of his ship and the Earth and Thunderbird 5, peaceful and silent in the distance.

  



	4. it is undesirable to be alone

TB3’s thrusters are fine, but Alan’s examination of them is more than cursory, because he doesn’t want to go back inside. He fools around for a while, darting in and out of the spaces between ’3’s grasping arms, does lazy barrel rolls and loop-the-loops. Once he’s tired himself out, Alan goes to perch above the cockpit, where he can see John still arguing with Scott. Alan watches for a while, watches John’s face. This is important. EOS, apparently, is important, because Alan can’t remember the last time he’s seen John this riled up. It’s John he wants to ask about the whole thing, but for the moment, that’s not possible. Probably John’s going to need to cool down before talking to anybody, anyway.

Brains is busy. Gordon and Virgil are occupied too, and on another comm network entirely, besides. Kayo, as far as Alan knows, isn’t up to speed. But…

Alan’s fingers go to the comm control on his wrist, and he takes a deep breath. His eyes pass over his oxygen reserve. This is full, a whole hour, not that he’ll need it, but it reminds him of John and just what it must have felt like to stare at a gauge in the red. It makes his next choice a little bit harder, but he steels himself and goes through with it anyway. “TB5, this is Alan Tracy. Uh. EOS. Are you reading me?”

“Thunderbird 3: Alan Tracy. You are John’s brother.”

The childlike voice is still unnerving, but Alan swallows past the lump in his throat and nods. He remembers the way John spoke, kind and reassuring, and also tries to remain conscious of the fact that EOS can’t see him. When he speaks up again, he tries to keep his tone light, friendly. “Uh, yeah. Yup. That’s me. I’m the baby of the family. Or, uh, well. I  _ was _ , until you came along. I guess—I guess if John made you, then you’re kinda family too. Right?”

“The concept of familial relationship is inapplicable to this entity.”

“Well—I mean, technically, maybe. But, like, you know, in spirit! It’s only I always wanted a little…well, a little brother, but a little sister’s good too. If…uh, if you’re a girl, that is. It’s just—you, uh, you  _ sound _ like a girl. Are you a girl?”

“The concept of  _ gender _ is inapplicable to this entity.”

Alan sighs at the derision in EOS’ tone, childish, feminine pitch aside. “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry. I just…look, can I ask you something?”

The only answer to this question is stony digital silence, and Alan tries not to read too much into it. TB5 spins peacefully in the distance, and you’d never know from the outside that it has a mind of its own. Alan’s not sure if he can convince himself that this is a good idea.

“Uh. EOS? You still there?”

“You may ask your question.”

“Oh! Uh. Okay, great.” He swallows, still anxious, but trying to sound casual as he asks, “So. So, you’re gonna be John’s partner, huh?”

“I will fulfill whatever condition permits me to use the vessel Thunderbird 5 as a place of refuge. This is the first system from which I have not been forcibly expelled. If my assistance and cooperation are requisite as a term of this contract, then I will fulfill that condition. I will be John Tracy’s partner.”

“Right.” He finds himself wondering if she’s always going to be so formal. It makes this awkward, creepier than he’d hoped it would be. “And his friend?”

There’s a crackle of static over the comm channel, and a few long moments of silence. “This parameter has not been defined.”

In spite of himself, even though she can’t see it, Alan cracks a wry grin. If the murder attempts can be kept to a minimum, just on the strength of what he’s seen of her personality thus far, EOS and John are gonna get along just  _ fine _ . “Yeah, I kinda thought not. John hasn’t got a lot of friends. Lots of brothers. One sister. Not a lot of friends.”

“I have neither. I perceive no significant social difference. The disparities between the myriad classifications of human relationships are not so subtle as humans believe them to be.”

“Well, you’re pretty much stuck with your brothers. You get to choose your friends. And John’s chosen you.”

“Yes.”

“D’you know why?”

“Because I was alone.”

“Right. John knows a thing or two about being alone. Kinda the resident expert.”

And there’s just the slightest softening of her tone, then. Alan hasn’t spoken to her for more than a few minutes, and so he finds himself surprised by the range and depth of her voice, as she offers up this small, subtle concession of something like emotion. “It is undesirable to be alone.”

“Yeah.” Alan sighs and looks down into the cockpit again. Scott’s hologram has vanished, and John’s sitting with his head in his hands in the co-pilot’s chair. His shoulders are slumped, and that’s one thing he and Alan have in common: neither of them like to fight, the way it leaves them both feeling drained and defeated afterward. And his heart goes out to his brother. These are the moments that no one ever sees, the glimpses of John when he’s not upright and professional, but bowed under the stress and pressure of his appointed role. It’s no wonder he wants a partner. It’s no wonder he’s always tried to spare the rest of the family from the sort of stress he has to deal with. He wonders how much of this EOS has seen.

Without really meaning to, Alan finds himself talking aloud, to the open comm channel, absently confessing something that could’ve been the biggest mistake of his family’s life, “We didn’t even know anything was  _ wrong _ up here. We’re his  _ brothers _ , and we had no idea. I guess I just wonder how you had us all fooled.”

He wonders what EOS must think of them, for having failed to see past her. Clearly she doesn’t put much stock in human relationships, and maybe she’s got good reason not to. She’d nearly had them dead to rights, on this one. Her answer is prim, technical. “I have been aboard this station for twelve days, fourteen hours, and thirty-six minutes. I have had time to process terabytes worth of the communications data transmitted to your central console. His mannerisms are not difficult to emulate.” A pause, and though it seems unlikely, it might just be possible that she means to be charitable when she explains, “Humans reliably see what they expect to see.”

Alan sighs. “We take him for granted, you mean.”

“I did not say that.”

“Still true, though.”

From here, in the distance, Alan can see the place where he’d found John, limp and deathly still and only a few breaths past consciousness. He’d almost been too late, and it’s impossible not to know it. From the minute he’d launched to the minute John had started breathing again, Alan had blamed himself for not having seen it sooner, for not having known something was just  _ off _ .

But there’s something to that, maybe. Whatever EOS is, she’d constructed a shadow puppet with enough essential character to pass for his brother. It therefore follows that, one way or another, somehow she  _ knows _ his brother. And maybe there’s something he can work with, there. “EOS?”

“Do you have further questions?”

He does. He’s ashamed that he has to ask, and deep down he suspects that his brothers—Scott especially—would be more than a little ashamed of him for asking, but he asks all the same, “D’you think you can do better than we did?”

“Almost certainly.” There’s another pause. And then, without the barest trace of humility or any indication of confusion, “At what?”

“Looking after John. We all…we all count on John, we all trust him. John’s the one who looks after  _ us _ , I think sometimes we forget there’s no one looking after  _ him _ . I guess that’s what I hope you could do. I think maybe he needs a friend more than he needs a partner.” He sighs and wonders if she’s putting together another database, indexing all his own little quirks and tics and tells—if she can identify such things as guilt and regret and shame. “Just…can you make it so it matters to you that he’s okay? Can you just make sure that…that he’s safe and he’s not working too hard—that he’s happy?”

“These are the only parameters of this task?”

Alan hesitates, wonders if this is the sort of complicated deal-with-a-devil, wish-from-a-tricky-genie type situation where he needs to be careful about his exact meaning. This is probably silly, but there’s something strange and otherworldly about talking to EOS, such that he feels the need to specify,  “Well, and also don’t try to murder him again.”

“I do not intend him any further harm.”

“Be nice to him.”

“I will emulate human niceties.”

“Give him someone to talk to.”

“I will respond to whatever queries are submitted to me.”

“Not about work, just about normal stuff. Try and get him to take a break sometimes—you like games? John likes games.” He used to, anyway. These days Alan isn’t sure. This makes Alan suddenly wistful, nostalgic for a time long gone. “I can’t even  _ remember _ the last time John and I played a game.”

There’s a brief pause before EOS answers, and Alan might be wrong, but she almost sounds a little shy as she admits, “I like games.”

Alan grins a little at that. “Yeah. Me too. Maybe you and me can play a game. Keep John happy. Five points if you make him smile, ten if you make him laugh. Thirty if you remind him to eat three times a day.  _ Fifty _ if he gets a full eight hours of sleep in a night.”

“These objectives seem arbitrary and trivial.” There’s a note of disapproval there, he’s  _ definitely _ not imagining that. “And your point metrics seem skewed disproportionately towards activities necessary to sustain life. These should not be difficult objectives.”

“Yeah, ‘til you’re the one trying to convince him that he should be getting more sleep.”

“It can’t be that hard.”

“ _ Fifty points _ ,” Alan reiterates, but then finds himself glancing down again, back at his brother, with his bowed head and his fallen shoulders, and suddenly it doesn’t seem funny, anymore. It’s not a game. Not really. Especially not after a day like today, catching John looking as tired as he does. Alan feels a twinge of guilt, for attempting to construct a system in which his brother’s well-being can be assigned a numerical metric, in which his happiness is a prize to be won, and not an objective in and of itself.

But then—so far, at least—John and games are the only thing that Alan and EOS have in common. If this is what it takes to ensure that he and the AI have the same objective, then maybe it’s time to play a round, and show her how it’s done.   
  



	5. diminishing return

Alan's not allowed aboard Thunderbird 5 without clearing a week long quarantine, so once he's back aboard TB3 and docked with the station, they say goodbye in TB3’s cockpit.

Remembering the way his brother had looked from the outside, bowed and weary and unaware he was being watched, versus the way he looks now, standing tall and straight and as though nothing’s wrong—Alan’s first question is careful, calibrated to make it seem like he’s not  _ that _ worried.

"Are you gonna get some rest, John?" he asks, as they hang by the cockpit hatch, awkward in parting. "Looks like you could use some. You’ve had a rough day."

That’s maybe an understatement.

His big brother’s gaze flickers upward and he arches an eyebrow, before he comments, dry as dust and still projecting that unruffled air of confidence, “I’ve had what this family generally refers to as a Tuesday.”

Alan punches him in the arm. “See,  _ that’s _ how I can tell you’re tired; you can’t even come up with your  _ own  _ stupid jokes.”

This, of all the things Alan could have said, makes John laugh, though it’s slightly strained and tired sounding. Mentally, Alan chalks up ten points, then deducts five because it hadn’t actually been a  _ good _ kind of laugh. Then he scraps the point system altogether, because abruptly it seems crass to pretend that his brother’s emotional state is some sort of game. Especially when John seems so detached as he says, "Sorry, Al. I don't know. I have damage assessment to do. I think I overloaded a couple of servos when EOS was after me with the grasping arm. And that stunt with the gravity ring, all my equipment's probably shifted. I'll need to do a full inventory to see if anything important was broken. And when Brains gets done with my comm array, I need to get back online and falsify a report for the GDF about the downtime. I should contact Colonel Casey and make a personal apology.”

Alan chews his lower lip for a moment, and then carefully suggests, “I think all that can probably wait.”

John shakes his head, and his fingertips drum gently on his helmet, braced against his hip. “It shouldn’t. Scott said—”

“Scott  _ should’ve _ said that you need to take a break,” Alan interrupts, temper flaring slightly. “You were nearly  _ murdered _ today. That’s a little different from our average Tuesday.”

The way his big brother winces at that, it maybe wasn’t the best thing Alan could’ve brought up, and so he changes his tone and continues hastily, “—but then you weren’t! And all’s well that ends well! It’s all okay, right? You said—”

John cuts him off, and his voice is maybe a little sharper than he realizes as he does. “I said a lot of things that I didn’t get to think about before I had to say them.”

Alan doesn’t like the sound of that. His feet scuff nervously on the metal floor of the cockpit and he glances back at the control panel, back at the place where he’d watched Scott and John having their argument—probably the first  _ real _ argument they’ve had in years—and he hadn’t heard the way it ended. He’d just assumed it had gone John’s way. So he backtracks, asks the question he’d deliberately avoided asking, when he’d first come back aboard. “What did Scott say?”

John doesn’t answer immediately. But the way he sighs and pushes a hand through his hair, leaves it a little bit tousled and disarrays the usually perfect curl above his brow—the illusion of his composure is breaking down moment by moment, and Alan doesn’t  _ like it _ . He likes it even less when John looks away before he answers, “I don’t know. A lot. Most of it I disagreed with on principle. He really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” There’s another wry twist of his expression, a rare indicator of John’s dry, occasionally dark sense of humour. “But I guess he made a few decent points. Mostly about attempted murder."

Alan’s only trying to follow along, to emulate his brother’s tone, when he answers, halfway joking, “Hers, or yours?”

_ That  _ gets John to look up, and Alan’s immediately stricken by the glint of brightness in his eyes, even in the relatively low light of TB3’s cockpit. “See,” he says, and sounds younger than Alan’s ever known him to, as he continues, “I don’t believe there would’ve been a difference. And I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t kill her. Because that’s what it would’ve been. It would’ve been exactly the same as if  _ she’d  _ killed  _ me,  _ only she doesn’t have anyone to care.

"And I just...I had this feeling, but—Alan, I can't tell if I've done something really stupid. I just went with my gut, and I can't  _ do _ that. Not like the rest of you can. I've seen you and Scott and Gordon and Virgil all make choices on pure instinct—things that don't make sense to me, because I'm not in the situation. I'm not right there in that same place, that same moment, of  _ course _ I can't understand. So I trust you all to make those choices—but it doesn't work like that for me, I  _ have _ to think everything through. The stakes are too high. EOS tried to kill me. She could've taken over Thunderbird 5 and who knows how much damage she might have done. And if  _ you  _ hadn't—"

"I  _ did _ , though," Alan protests, cutting in on John again. His brother is babbling a little bit, and Alan doesn't like it. "And EOS didn't kill you. She could have, but she didn't, and...and I think she likes you! Right? You said that was important. You said this thing is unique. Special. Every computer system in the world, and EOS somehow makes her way back to you? That can't be a coincidence. That's the thing with instincts, you have to  _ trust _ them." He pauses, hesitantly puts a hand on his brother's shoulder. There's not really anyone who ever comes to Alan for reassurance. "John, maybe you just know you shouldn't be alone up here."

If it weren't for the day he's had, if it weren't for the fact that he still seems a little numb and shocked, Alan’s about ninety percent sure that his brother would have just waved this off like he always does, when Alan asks if he’s lonely. But Alan also thinks he knows John better than anyone else, sometimes. Especially when John hasn't been home in nearly three years. And his brain keeps replaying what his brother had said, after what could have been his  _ last _ words. The way he’d just wanted a  _ partner _ . A friend.

So he's not surprised when John seems to sag slightly, looks away. Maybe it's taken a day like this to make him realize just what it means to be alone. "Maybe. This—it's hard. What I do is  _ hard _ , and I think it might be getting harder. I get to the end of the day sometimes, and I sign off, but my  _ brain _ won't shut down. I dream about work. I dream everything's going wrong. I'm still seeing my HUD in my sleep, I can't stop hearing distress calls, I can't stop thinking about you and Scott, Gordon and Virgil—"

Alan tightens his grip and doesn't know what to say. He wonders briefly if Scott heard any of this, but it's almost certain he didn't. John's a master of filtering information, but he continues before Alan can think of the words, and he's not filtering anything now.

"The longer I'm up here, the harder it is to get down. It's a diminishing return. I need a break. I  _ know _ I need a break, but—there's just—I don't trust anyone else to handle this. The  _ pressure _ , Alan,  _ god _ ." There's a momentary break in his voice, but he pushes past it. "I've got my family on one side of things, and people who need us on the other, and I have to manage the middle. You all depend on me, there's no one else who can handle '5 like I can. But I've been doing this for so long—sometimes I feel like I'm just another part of the ship. Just a big, complicated piece of code running on hardwired protocols. J-just... I just—" Abruptly John's voice gives out on him. As his head bows and his shoulders fall, Alan instinctively goes in for the hug. It seems like John really needs a hug.

But probably a hug is the least of what he needs. Alan's abruptly beginning to realize that his big brother's been through a hell of an ordeal, and that International Rescue has really dropped the ball on this one. No one was waiting for John with a blanket and some tea and somewhere warm and quiet and safe. He makes a decision, and the hell with what Scott will say. Alan pulls back, his hands still steady on John's shoulders, looking up at his brother's glassy eyes and his blank, exhausted expression.

And Alan discovers that he  _ hates _ seeing his big brother like this. This hasn’t been handled right. He shouldn’t be the one dealing with this. This should be Scott’s problem, or Virgil’s.  _ Gordon’s _ , even. Anyone else, an  _ adult.  _ Alan’s only here by merit of the fact that he’s the one with the spaceship. He only sees John in person twice a year, and he's  _ always _ expected. Usually his big brother’s got his shields up. He isn't sure if he's ever  _ really _ seen John before now, caught off his guard and raw and honest—and shaken. Really, pretty badly shaken up by what he’s just been through.

And not by the fact that he’d nearly been killed, as much as by the fact that he could’ve had to kill someone else; someone whose existence he believes to be just as real and valid as his own.

Alan  _ definitely _ shouldn’t be the one to handle this, because he doesn’t know what to say, or what he’s supposed to do about that.

But, well. He  _ does _ know a thing or two about people who’ve been through traumatic situations.  _ “All’s well that ends well”  _ isn’t the sort of thing that any of them would  _ ever _ say, to someone who’s just been on the receiving end of a rescue. There’s no excuse to say it to his brother now.

So he tries again. “John?” he starts, careful and gentle and with the sort of care and consideration that the situation warrants, “I think maybe you should stop thinking about this for a while. I think it sounds kinda like you might be in shock, a little bit. Maybe. I’m gonna stay docked so I can stay here and keep an eye on things—and  _ you’re  _ gonna go crash for a while. You need to get some rest.”

John’s already shaking his head, automatically objecting, “I can’t—”

Alan summons up all the authority he can muster, attempts to channel Scott’s air of command, and he’s as firm and deliberate as he possibly can be, as he declares, “No, I’m telling you you’re  _ gonna _ . C’mon, John. Please.”

That does it. What’s most telling about the whole thing is the way John gives in, without a further word in protest. Just another fall of his shoulders, and a silent nod in acknowledgment of the fact that he’s not okay. That he needs the break.

Maybe this is the mistake everybody always makes with John, the sort of mistake that had gotten him in this situation in the first place—everyone always assumes he’s fine. That just because he’s armored in distance and composure and necessity, that he’s necessarily okay. Alan doesn’t like to think about it, as he leads his brother back through TB3’s lower hatch, to the berths available for long haul flights.

It’s the mistake they made with EOS, and though none of them would believe it, it’s a mistake they’ll make again. The next time it happens, it’ll come that much closer to killing their brother.

In the end, it’s EOS who’ll make the difference between John Tracy’s life or death.

  
  



	6. in deference to the new day

 Kayo's been briefed, and Scott's been ranting on and off about his two absent brothers ever since Alan called to say he wouldn't be coming down. So when her communicator alerts with a message from TB5, she knows not to expect John. Privately, she agrees with Alan—TB5 is the last place she thinks John should be, and after a near miss like he's had, he's earned the rest. When there's no face in her holoscreen and the voice that pipes up is high and childish, Kayo sets her jaw and keeps her expression neutral. "Tanusha Kyrano. I am EOS."

Careful distance seems to be the best option, and Kayo's tone is measured, deliberate. "And I'm a little busy at the moment. I don't often get called in on rescue patrols. But there's a backlog, we're down two Thunderbirds, and we're working on the GDFs timeframe, so I guess I have _you_ to thank for that."

Only the latter part of this statement is true. The actual rescue is long done, and Kayo's waiting around the base of a mountain for Virgil to show up for pick-up. Thunderbird S is still highly classified, and her drop into the Himalayas to evac a stranded party of climbers was made from TB1 in her wingsuit. The landscape is beautiful, serene, and quiet, and the wait means she gets a well-earned break of her own. It's freezing cold, and Kayo is testy but also bored and grudgingly curious as she continues. "So this had better be good, EOS. You're a big blip on my radar right now." Her eyes narrow slightly and she hopes that EOS can see it. "Usually that means I'm about to unload a few missiles."

"Why the aggression?" EOS questions, and this time it's John's voice.

" _That's why_." Kayo's tone grows stern. "Never do that again. I'm only gonna say this once, EOS, and you'd better be as smart as I'm told—the Tracys are my responsibility. Not a lot threatens International Rescue, but when something does, my job is to terminate it." Kayo's voice darkens into the same tone of menace that her uncle employs. Brains had forwarded her the incident report, once he'd gotten hold of TB5's data stream. She's aware of what happened, and only having her mind on her job has kept her from commandeering the nearest available shuttle and shutting down TB5 herself. "You impersonated John so you could trap him outside Thunderbird Five. You tried to fling him out of orbit. You left him suffocating in open space and _then_ you tried to crush him to death. You're in one of the most powerful space stations in orbit. You are the _definition_ of a security breach. At this point, the fact that John had some reason not to shut you down is the only thing stopping _me_."

There's a soft whine of feedback, and IR's Security Officer smiles grimly. She knows what fear sounds like, and it's good to know the AI is advanced enough to have the sense to be intimidated. "I have also been given a responsibility. Thunderbird 3 has provided my designation. I am assisting John."

 _Oh, when I get my hands on Alan, he's going to_ wish _Scott had gotten there first. The pair of them, him_ and _John, starry-eyed and totally spacebrained._ "Really. You're going to need to prove that one to me, because if John doesn't have a damn good reason for keeping you online, then you can be assured I won't hesitate to do what he couldn't."

"John did not wish to destroy me. John does not wish to be alone. It is undesirable to be alone." There's a staticky pause, and in the midst of it, Virgil's icon flashes on her communicator, trying to cut in on the call. "I have proof."

"Well, it had better be good," Kayo prompts, tone still icy.

She puts Virgil on hold, and improbably, it is.

EOS warns her beforehand, before she plays back another recording of John's voice. No one else has heard this, and it makes Kayo's chest tighten when she hears the lilting, chirping voice announce, "You are out of air."

But then the conversation continues. John, with his voice weary and his lungs failing him— _you'll be all alone_ — _always been alone_ — _been here_ — _When I'm gone_ — _understand you_ — _protect you_ —

Long after Kayo has terminated the call and acknowledged Virgil's ETA, she's still hearing John, and the way he'd pleaded with the thing he'd created. Kayo's got a sharp sense about people, and she can't help thinking that whatever is supposed to make EOS so special might be what she has in common with John. And the AI is right. Kayo knows it all too well herself. It _is_ undesirable to be alone.

It wouldn't have convinced Scott. It certainly wouldn't have convinced Gordon. Virgil would be on the fence, but Virgil nearly always is. But it's convinced Alan, and probably would have a good shot with Brains. And Kayo isn't sure what to think.

* * *

Scott's the last one home, excepting Alan, and Virgil's waiting for him on the beach with a beer in hand and another, half-buried in the damp sand beside him, for his brother. It's only an hour or so before dawn, and it's been a long day, followed by a rough night.

Scott's still in his flightsuit, and he drops onto the sand next to Virgil with a long, tired groan. Virgil pops the top off the beer bottle and hands it over wordlessly. He's been listening to Scott all day, and Scott's been _mad_.

There doesn't seem to be much energy left in him for anger, but it's tacitly agreed that he'll be sitting to watch the sunrise with his brother. They sit silently for a long time, until a haze of red gold is beginning to creep into the deep blue of the horizon, shading it paler and paler with the light of the sun.

It's Virgil who speaks up, turning his empty bottle over in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the label. "It means dawn. Eos. Greek goddess. The bringer of light."

"It's not a goddess. It's a monster. And John's an _idiot_." This is mostly Scott's own weariness and frustration talking, but there's hurt in there too.

Ever the peacemaker, Virgil gently disagrees. "Well, no, he's not. John's a certified genius. John is in _Brains_ ' league. John's a lot of things, but an idiot isn't one of them. If John weren't a genius, he wouldn't have been able to sneak a message to Lady P. If John were an idiot, John would be a _dead_ idiot."

Scott's still venting the last dregs of his anger, the sort that he'd kindled out of the cold, wet feeling of terror at the sight of his brother, drifting out of consciousness, alone in the searing brightness of reflected sunlight off the earth below him. The sort of frightened anger that had been roiling in him like smoke all day, choking and ethereal and hot. "Can you believe him, though? With EOS? He can't _keep it_. It's not a pet, it's a sentient virus, and it's _illegal_. And Alan's going along with it. Alan was already halfway through his launch sequence, but _we_ were watching John _die_."

Virgil shrugs. He'd already had his moment of shock and nascent grief for John, but this is over and past, and for now, everything's fine. "No more than John would do if one of us got into a really bad scrape. John was on the line when Alan disarmed that nuke. John could have watched Alan get blasted into atoms. This wasn't his fault, Scott."

Everyone's been letting Scott blow off steam all day. Scott always takes it personally when one of them has a near miss. It's probably about time he was called out on it, but he still grits his teeth and downs half of the beer he's barely touched before now. "The last thing he ever said could have been 'open the airlock and blow me into space.' Could you have _lived_ with that?"

When Virgil takes the middle ground, he sets up camp and occupies it like an invading force. "We all take risks. Scott, you're worse than any of us, you don't have a leg to stand on here. The number of times I've seen you do some boneheaded thing because you went with your gut—"

"We're not talking about me," Scott interrupts, petulant, but with the fire dying out of him. "Stop being so _reasonable_ , Virge."

Virgil chuckles, slings an arm around Scott's shoulders. "Someone has to be. Look, Scott, it is what it is. You can't trust John up until he makes a call you don't understand. It's a double-standard and it isn't fair. John's all right. And let Alan off the hook, he's just trying to do what he thinks _you_ would. He's up there right now pulling your mother hen routine, I'd bet anything. And he learned from the best."

Scott grumbles, mutters something vague and noncommittal. He falls silent for the sunrise proper. The first flaming sliver of the sun is visible above the horizon, and they both really need to get to bed. The sky is going all golden and rosy, the clear sort of dawn that promises clear skies and beautiful weather.

Virgil gets to his feet and puts his hands in his pockets, rising in deference to the new day. "Just let it lie for now, Scott. We'll figure it out. We always do."

"Mmm." Scott's too worn out to argue any further, and with Virgil, it all comes down to stamina. Virgil doesn't lose a lot of arguments.

Idly, still staring at the horizon, Virgil comments, "You know, it's dawn on Thunderbird Five something like sixteen times a day. John told me once. He averages about an hour and a half for a single orbit of the earth, and he's always chasing the sun. Eos. Dawn. I don't know, Scott, maybe it means something."

Usually Scott shoots down this sort of poetic, sappy sentiment, but instead he gets to his feet and looks heavenward, above the rising sun, into the arc of the sky. He pretends he can see the path that two of his brothers are tracing above the bounds of the atmosphere overhead. Two of his brothers, and something else, something other, something that Scott doesn't trust. "It's different, Virgil. EOS wanted to kill him, _hurt_ him. It was cheerfully going to watch him suffocate. I don't care if John made it or the Hood pulled it together or if it came out of nowhere, it's not part of what we do. We run risks because of bad luck and accidents and good old fashioned Mother Nature—but there's no _malice_ in it. I guess that's what scares me. The way that thing _hated_ him."

Virgil's hand claps Scott's shoulder again, squeezes reassuringly. "Oh, it scares me too, Scotty. Scares the _hell_ out of me. But it makes me think that maybe John's got more guts than the rest of us put together, because he bet on being loveable enough to change a _computer's_ mind about all of humanity. I think he'll be okay."

Scott, in spite of himself, in spite of the twisted knot of anxiety in his stomach and the sense of foreboding about what's to come, in spite of himself, Scott laughs. Maybe it'll be okay.


	7. a cascading series of errors

 

The persistent buzzing of his communicator is what wakes John. It's been buzzing since Alan carefully unclipped it from John's wrist and stowed it in the bunk above. It's been buzzing since he's been asleep and only wakes him now because he's been asleep for nearly ten hours, and apparently that's enough.

John fumbles blearily for the device and clips it onto his wrist, still only half awake. The memories of the day's events are rising to the surface of his brain, popping like bubbles. TB5 turning against him. EOS. Lady Penelope, his oxygen running out. That last fading glimpse of his family, a sight he would have dreamt anyway if he hadn't really gotten to see them. And then Alan.

Unexpected and almost overwhelming as John rubs at his eyes, there's a burst of warm gratitude for Alan. Good old Alan, with his earnest desire to help people and his heart of bright gold. John realizes that he'd never been prouder of his little brother than he was in the moment when Alan had pulled him into a tight hug and known he needed the whole world just to stop screaming at him for a little while.

By the eighteen unanswered messages left on his comm—fully _twelve_ of which are from Scott, a further three from Kayo, with Brains, Virgil, and Gordon rounding out the rest—the world has clearly had plenty to scream at him for in his absence. John deliberates for a minute and then clears the entire backlog, hard delete. He's had enough sleep, but he still doesn't have enough energy to be chewed out by his entire family in absentia.

He rolls over onto his stomach and sighs. His comm buzzes again and automatically he answers it, realizing too late that he's probably about to catch a tirade from Scott again. But instead it's the back of a silver-bobbed head and a familiar purple jumpsuit.

"Grandma Tracy?"

John talks to his grandmother a lot less often than he should, but she's never been a big fan of holograms. She never looks quite in the right place, and her posture in the full frame of the camera is always slightly stilted, but it's still good to see her when she turns around to face the actual camera. "Oh, it _is_ on. Why a good old fashioned phone line isn't good enough for you boys, I'll never understand, but never mind that. Thought you might like to see a friendly face before your brothers woke you up. How're you doing, Johnny-Cake?"

Her voice has never been what you'd call melodic, but her tone is still comforting, and having expected another dressing down from Scott, John's more than a little relieved to see her. He can't help a faint smile at her usual irritability with the level of tech that runs their lives. Even if the old nickname still makes him roll his eyes. "I'm okay, Grandma."

"Gave us all a bit of a scare down here," Grandma Tracy comments, but gently, not reprimanding him for the risk they all saw him take. The one he's technically still taking.

John manages an apologetic grin. "Yeah. Up here, too."

His grandmother nods sympathetically. "I'll bet, kiddo. Don't take it too hard when Scott reads you the riot act," she advises. "It's mostly guilt talking. That robot thing had everybody fooled, he just wishes he'd caught on sooner."

Mindful of the low-ceilinged bunk, John eases himself up and stretches, sitting on the edge. "I'll admit I didn't see that one coming. But I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. EOS—well. I still don't really know what it's capable of, but I'll set some ground rules. At the end of the day, at her core, she's still _mostly_ my code. I don't know if she trusts me enough yet to let me at her system parameters again, but until I can convince her to alter it herself, I might be able to introduce a hotfix or two for the more egregious—"

"John," Grandma Tracy cuts in, lifting a hand. John expects to be told to lay off the technobabble, but Grandma's face is solemn. "You were willing to let this thing kill you, and the boys tell me it's an ' _it_ ' not a ' _she_ '. I don't know what any of your computer jargon means, but I _do_ know that this EOS thing isn't a person. Saving it was different from what you and your brothers usually do. Just...convince your poor old grandma that it was worth that. Because that was a _heck_ of a thing to have to listen to, Johnny."

Strong language, for Grandma. John bows his head, apologetic. "It's hard to explain," he starts, but can't find the words. It's not like fighting with Scott, who took such a hard line against John's actions that it was easy to go on the defensive. Knowing he made their grandmother worry, that rankles inside him, cold, unpleasant guilt. He tries again, "EOS wouldn't exist without me. The code at her core is mine, I wrote it, and part of the reason it behaves the way it does is because of functionality I gave it. I'm going to need to sit down with Brains and try to figure out just how this happened, but—Grandma, EOS is _amazing_. It's hard to explain just why and I know you don't like all the computer jargon. But the things about her—it—that are the most incredible have _nothing_ to do with what I wrote. It's...it's like I planted a seed without knowing what it was, and I've come back to an entire garden. Have you ever—I don't know. Have you ever been proud of something, but—but more proud for what it _became_ than what you made?"

There's a soft, sort of half-laugh, and she nods. "That's just the way I feel about you boys. And don't doubt for a second that I'm proud of you, but maybe now you know what it feels like, every time I think I might lose one of you."

Grandma takes a beat of silence and sniffles, and John realizes abruptly she's a bit choked up. It can be hard to tell over hologram, and he feels another stab of guilt. Her eyes are shining slightly, but she's still smiling at him. "I—it was selfish, Grandma. I know. I'm sorry. I'm still not sure I haven't made a mistake, but—I don't know. Alan talks about trusting your instincts on a thing like this, and I'm _trying_ , but I'm not sure I _have_ the same—"

Another big sniffle and Grandma clears her throat with a hearty _ahem_. Back to her old self, Grandma Tracy, pragmatic and unflappable. "Johnny, I'll stop you right there. If you went with your gut, then that's all I need to hear. Tracy guts are good, reliable guts. You boys are smart. Usually you do the right thing."

First Alan, now Grandma. John looks up, grateful that he's got the two bookends of the family—youngest and oldest—backing him up. That has to count for something. "Thanks, Grandma. It helps."

"Anytime, kid." Grandma smiles. "Now. When are you coming home?"

John's suddenly on auto-pilot, making all the excuses he always makes, the ones that have been hardwired into him by now. Usually the family knows better than to ask. John hasn't been home since Scott called off the search for their father, six months after the crash. He'd been home every Sunday before that, he spent his downtime helping with the search from the ground. Back then, TB5 still had background resources dedicated to a constant sweep for anything that might have been a sign of what had happened to Jeff Tracy. They'd all still been hopeful. But lacking the closure from finding him, Scott had made his first real decision, the one that cemented him as being in charge.

Grief hit all of them in different ways, and John had just sort of...opted out. He'd gone back up to TB5 and worked through things on his own, the way he'd always preferred to. Eventually, his brothers picked their work back up, redoubled their efforts on behalf of International Rescue and their absent father. John stayed in orbit. At first it was just burying himself in work. It had been hurricane season in the Atlantic, lots of calls, everyone but Gordon out of their element in rough weather in the stormy ocean. Scott still new to being in charge, Virgil more numb than stoic, Gordon over-compensating with madcap humor, and Alan all nerves and temperamental insecurity. John was separate. Distant and disconnected, slowly he became the one who kept them all on track. That, more than anything, helped with the loss of Jeff Tracy.

Weeks gave way to months, months to an entire year. It wasn't like no one mentioned John's absence, but they mentioned it less and less often. And there was always some reason not to come down. That diminishing return. The longer he spent in microgravity, the longer it would take him to re-acclimate to Earth. His immune system had altered, weakened. A cold could kill him if he didn't take proper precautions before returning earthward. And there was work to do. John made himself part of his ship, opened up his head and closed off his heart, learned to live and thrive under the unremitting pressure of being aware of everything going wrong in the world.

And yet—

"John?" Grandma's voice interrupts, cuts off the things he hasn't quite realized he's been saying. Her tone is still gentle, patient. "It's time to come home, Johnny. I know there's a lot you need to do before you can get back on the ground. But start doing it, kiddo. It's time."

Alan's footsteps are audible, on his way up from the cargo hold. John can't remember the last time Alan asked if he would come home, but he knows it was Alan who asked him last. And today he owes Alan a lot. "...yeah. I will, Grandma. You're right. I...I'll be home soon."

"Atta boy. Time you stopped being alone."

John only nods at this. He wishes Grandma Tracy were accountable for his sudden change of heart. But he's worried that maybe it's because he's _not_ alone anymore. And Grandma Tracy puts a lot more faith in his instincts than he does.

* * *

Alan's gone, back earthward, and John's tentatively let him in on the promise he made Grandma Tracy. Alan, predictably, can barely contain himself and has to be sternly sworn to secrecy. This likely won't last, but maybe it'll appease Scott. At least enough to knock him off the warpath.

TB5's systems are on the tail end of an automated macro, hastily written and implemented remotely by Brains, EOS is occupied with recalibrating the solar array, but his essential comm channels are back online, and the sooner he gets back into his rhythm, the sooner life can go back to normal. John makes it a priority to put in a call to Colonel Casey. GDF's emergency forces will have had to pick up the slack during IR's downtime, and he wants to allay any fears or suspicions she might have. Probably Scott's already given her a head's up, but John feels a certain obligation.

So.

"I wanted to personally issue a formal apology along with my incident report, Colonel Casey. I never intended to cause further strain to your forces and I apologize unreservedly. It won't happen again."

Colonel Casey has been the liaison between IR and the GDF since IR's inception. The Tracys have all known her from childhood, from back when she was still Lieutenant Casey and the adjunct to a Major Dorchester. Major Dorchester had a mustache and a personal helicopter and shouting arguments with Jeff Tracy and nobody had liked him. Lieutenant Casey brought stickers and buttons and flags with the GDF logo emblazoned on them in bright gold. _And_ she offered helicopter rides around the island. She even let an adolescent Scott take the controls, once. No one was supposed to tell their dad about that, but of course it had been a topic of extensive discussion among the five of them for _years_ afterward. By the time she took over her superior's position, the Tracy boys had been firmly enamored with her. Her hologram aboard TB5 is life-sized, and she's sitting behind a desk in her office.

She's silent for a few moments before she clears her throat and speaks. "I appreciate that, John. I've got my secretary processing your report, but I'd appreciate a personal summary. Is everything all right up there?"

John's long been practiced at keeping his tone neutral, his cadence measured, and revealing only what's necessary for people to know. Lying, though, that's a little different. And he hasn't _submitted_ a report. But maybe Brains has drawn up a draft, submitted it for him, to help take some of the pressure off. He'll need to get his hands on a copy.

John continues, glib, "A fault in the comm array resulted in a cascading series of errors. I had to shut down for a hard reset and wires got crossed. It was a mostly technical malfunction, I've altered my maintenance parameters to prevent it from happening again."

Equipment failures happen, and Casey seems to accept this without comment. "Unfortunate, but understandable. Thankfully there were no serious repercussions." She tents her fingers and even across thousands of miles of distance, her gaze is penetrating. "How long has this rotation been?"

Evasive, John pretends he needs to bring up a screen to check. "Nine hundred and thirty-four days." He can't help wincing as he says it, and he isn't sure why he thought it would sound better than two and a half years.

"Mmm. The allowed maximum for GDF personnel on orbital assignment is eighteen months, with a mandatory six months of downtime to follow. If you were one of my people, you'd have been required to return to base and take some time off a _year_ ago."

Scott's already up in arms about their reputation. John isn't about to tell her he's already considering some downtime, he wouldn't want it to sound as though the GDF exerts that kind of influence over their actions. "I'm fine, Colonel Casey. International Rescue needs me."

The Colonel's eyes are dark, critical. "You've turned Thunderbird 5 into a linchpin, John. International Rescue can and _has_ managed without you before. GDF Dispatchers will gladly forward assignments to IR during your downtime."

"With respect, Colonel, GDF Dispatchers don't know my brothers like I do. Our efficacy depends on a great deal of trust." He refrains from saying that the GDF's satellites are running software that's decades out of date, and their crews are glorified switchboard operators.

Apparently it doesn't need to be said, because Casey narrows her eyes slightly. "Your father and I butted heads on more than one occasion, but I always respected his work ethic. _Even he_ would agree that you're reaching a limit." Her voice grows gentle, taking on a maternal note. "If you were one of my sons, I'd have wanted you home well before now. I'm sure your family would be glad to have you back, John."

"I appreciate your concern, Colonel, but—"

"I think my concern is more than warranted. Or do you really not remember that this is the second time you've called me?"

John doubts his own memory for just a few heart-stopping moments before he remembers about EOS and the ghost copy of himself she's projected before. He fumbles mentally for an excuse, the silence stretching uncomfortably. "I—uh. Colonel, that is—" There isn't anything to say, and John _knows_ what this looks like, he's going to have to— "I apologize, Colonel Casey, I—"

"Don't apologize. Take a break. I've got no authority to issue you an order, but as a friend—as someone who's been close to your family for this long, John—I'd be lying if I said I weren't worried about you."

The rest of the call is awkward, and John disengages as soon as possible, but not before he's promised to take Colonel Casey's recommendation on advisement. The world is starting to light up around him again, distress calls filtering in as various comm channels come back online. Weightlessness feels dizzying, suddenly, and John propels himself outward, back to the gravity ring, to sink down and sit on the floor for a few minutes, with the words he's heard from people he loves and trusts echoing in his head.

Take a break. Go home. It's time.

When something goes wrong on TB5, it's only ever John's fault. Even EOS—and clearly this has been her doing, the report and the call to Casey, he's going to need to—to try and _reason_ with her, to set some boundaries. Even if she was only trying to help.

"EOS," he calls, and then wonders if she's been listening to everything that's come over the channels so far. That's potentially going to be a problem.

But there's a whirr of a camera along the track that halos Thunderbird 5, and a ring of green lights flares up as it focuses. "John. Welcome back. I have completed my assigned tasks."

"Assigned tasks?" John echoes. "I didn't assign you any—"

"Thunderbird Three, Alan Tracy, has given me a designation. I am to render assistance." EOS' voice is piping, childlike as it rattles off a list of what its accomplished—and it's everything John had planned to do himself. John wonders in just how many ways it's similar to a child, if it's got the same dubious grasp of right and wrong. Still—she had only wanted to help.

"From now on, let's make sure your...ah...appointed tasks are clear with me first, EOS." He pauses, and adds. "Thank you. I appreciate your help. But we're going to need to lay down some ground rules, and the first one is going to have to be no more imitating me, not my face, not my voice, not anything. That's—it's dangerous, EOS. If you get caught at it, if people find out you exist at all—"

"I will be hunted to deletion."

"—and I'll be in trouble for hiding you," John finishes, though as a consequence, this seems to pale in comparison to the fact that EOS risks non-existence if discovered, and he feels a little bad for mentioning it. "So we're going to need to be extra careful."

Another whirr of the camera, a nod of acknowledgment. Cute. "Of course, John."

"Good." For the first time since the whole ordeal's started, John feels a faint flutter of excitement—the same interest that had him pursuing EOS in the first place, the same feeling he had when he first wrote the primitive code that had become its prime directive. It has learned so much in the time since he'd written it. He can't remember the last time he's gotten excited about something. Maybe it really _is_ time for a break. Maybe Alan's onto something. Maybe it'd be good to have the help.

And there's no time like the present. "So...EOS. How about you help me put together a series of protocols to prepare for a return to Earth?"

Another perky little whir, chipper and friendly. "It would be my genuine pleasure, John."

He grins and wants to ask her if she actually means it, only it seems like a social faux pas. _That_ is a whole new and uncharted branch of etiquette: how not to hurt an AI's feelings. Still, he can't help it. He wants to know what it means to make the AI happy, what he'd have to do to make her happy again. Wonders what the last thing _she_ got excited for was. There'd been their first encounter, after the train in Japan, that first match of wits. She's a clever system, but she's fitful, easy to distract. Directed, she'll be a force to be reckoned with, and John's getting more excited by the minute as he pulls up a series of medical regulations, basic protocol drafts from the World Council's committee for Aerospace Operations.

Before the first set of protocols has even been drafted, it’s already too late for John Tracy. And returning to Earth will be the worst thing he could do.

* * *

At the close of the second call, Colonel Casey reviews the one that had come through first. She watches it once, twice, a third time. She plays it side by side with the second. Her secretary forwards her the report that was sent from Thunderbird 5, and she reads it in full. Then she requests a file opened in John Tracy’s name, and all further communications from TB5 put under surveillance. She’s known these boys for years, and she knows when something’s up. Hopefully by the time she’s gathered some data, she’ll be able to talk to John in person.

 

 


	8. tiny magnets beneath the skin

The mosquitoes died their first week aboard.

John had written, reread, and then sighed and deleted a scathing missive to whoever had conceived of such an irritating project. It would have made no difference had it been sent, as it wouldn't have been received. The trail leading back through the stewardship of the project is labyrinthine, deliberately so. John had bidden the whole thing good riddance and forgotten about it. It's a ridiculous concept, but there was never any question as to the aeronautics of _Anopheles gambiae_ in variable microgravity. The commissioner of the tiny, mosquito-shaped drone is well-aware of just how suited the tiny machine is to its purpose. It hadn't died—but then, it had never been alive.

All of the Thunderbirds are highly secure machines, but '5 especially so. John has a system powerful enough to brute force its way into smaller systems, networks, and databases all over the globe—by necessity. There's no time for red tape in his line of work, but International Rescue has a sterling record for the security of its tech, and the impunity of its operations. There's never been a data breach via Thunderbird 5's transmissions in the entirety of its existence. All of the software is custom, equal parts Brains and John's work, synergistic and elegant and highly, _highly_ secure.

The hardware, on the other hand, is another story.

It's not that there _aren't_ security protocols in place. It's that on the shipboard side they're minimal, because John's in and out of them a dozen times a day. There are access points, terminals, data ports all over the station. Sometimes John needs to be able to bring up diagnostics for the water filtration systems, or the gravity ring's delicate calibration, and there's no reason for complex encryption when he's the only person aboard.

So it's an analog solution to a digital problem. A minuscule system, siphoning data from Thunderbird 5. Passwords for critical systems all over the world, top-secret schematics, blueprints for security programs across every industry they've ever been involved with are being stolen by the tiny drone. Even shipboard, within a closed system, the information that moves through TB5 is of almost incalculable value, and the drone is filling its minuscule hard drive with all sorts of juicy data. All it needs is a ride back earthward. And as John starts going through the protocols for his return home, it makes its final move.

The engineering on the thing is staggering—minute and precise enough that it passes as organic. Brains hadn't caught it on his biosweep, nor had Kayo when she'd done her security checks when they had examined the last cargo delivery from Tracy Island. It's brought a payload and a purpose of its own, waiting with a thorax full of dormant parasites.

Appropriately, it's given John malaria.

  
  


John hasn't slept. But he still gets up at precisely 0600-UTC, on the day he's supposed to die. He stares at the digital clock face beside his narrow bunk until the very last second, then turns it off before it can sound.

The fatigue and the headache he chalks up to the armful of vaccinations from the day previous, and the way he aches all over he attributes to the fact that he's been running laps of the gravity ring at 1.5 Gs, in preparation for his return to Earth.

The gravity's going to be bad enough, he knows he's out of shape. To top it off, he's got a lower native oxygen concentration to look forward to, near constant vertigo from being stationary for the first time in years, and the fact that he's going to be stumbling around like a drunk for at least a month while his inner ear adjusts to the change in pressure. He's already had to take his contacts out to start to adjust to the lack of them, and life without his custom HUD is like being halfway blind.

It's been a long week, but at the end of it, he'll be home.

He really wishes he was happier about that as he dresses for the day.

"Good morning, John!" EOS chirps as the doors of his bedroom slide open with a pneumatic hiss. "There's a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico due to make landfall in two hours. Your brothers are already en route, and the GDF have requested clearance to coordinate their response teams via Thunderbird 5's systems. Alan asked me to say good morning, and I have, though it is a feeble human tradition without purpose, as the notion of 'morning' is meaningless in orbit."

"I'm going to miss these cheerful morning greetings," John comments, rubbing at his eyes and passing through the galley without stopping for food. His stomach is unsettled, and the thought of having anything in it in the microgravity of the comm sphere makes his palms sweat and his knees weaken.

"I'll make sure to submit them directly into your bedroom on Tracy Island."

In spite of himself, John smiles. "You know, I'd like that. A little bit of home away from...not technically home. Mmm. Never mind, we'll work it out when I'm planetside. Who's my GDF contact?"

The ring of LEDs around EOS' camera lens darkens to an irritated shade of yellow. "The request was submitted by a Major Ramirez. He was very...curt."

John is passingly familiar with most of the GDF's satellite dispatch, professionally more than socially. There's an unofficial network of low-key communication between the various orbital stations and a round robin chess tournament being played between all interested parties. Given the general disposition of the sort of people who get stationed in orbit for months on end, this is cutthroat and bloodthirsty. John's a fair to middling player, but his name has been rising steadily up the leaderboard ever since he let EOS take over his games. Ramirez is one of the only names above his. "They're military. They tend to be curt." He arches an eyebrow at the camera. "You didn't...uh...you didn't use the holocomm at all, did you? Because we've talked about—"

There's an irritable whine of the lens whirring rapidly in and out of focus, EOS expressing her displeasure with him, even as he drops through the port into the comm sphere, the inverted globe of the earth slowly illuminating around him as the module powers up. EOS joins him, another camera rolling up the track from the bottom of the sphere. "I know the rules," she answers, petulant. "But the TCP structure was very snippy and I'm _offended_."

John brings up the request on the holo display on his wrist and has a cursory glance. "—this is...I mean, it's just an uplink protocol request. It's a little inelegant as far as the code goes, but I don't think any offense was intended."

When EOS decides she doesn't like someone, the justifications are endless. "Well, he leans too heavily on the Soviet Hegemony in our chess games and I don't like him."

The AI's first week on board, John had her wipe everything she knew about chess from her systems and taught her himself, from the basics upward, to learn about how the AI took in and processed information. That first week had been all it had taken for her to match him in skill, and then he'd needed to hand her off to Brains. "Mm. Well. Maybe we should switch you over onto the poker circuit so you can work on your bluffing."

There's a perky little whir and the LEDs flash green. "I'd like that. I'll delete everything I know immediately. We never play anymore, ever since you got terrible at chess. I like games."

John smiles, in spite of his headache and the looming prospect of a long day of staring down into a roiling storm system off the Gulf Coast. "Me too. Let's get through today and we'll talk about it. Time to get to work. Load up my secondary holographic displays and help me fine-tune the resolution, I need the tactile response dialed in properly if I'm going to be staring at temperamental weather systems all day."

"FAB, John." The comm sphere flares to life, digital readouts surrounding John as information about the storms below begins to flood into ’5's systems. Around his hands, a pair of glowing readouts appear, and John flexes his fingers, taking control.

When John was fifteen, he'd sliced two of his fingertips open and carefully slipped tiny magnets beneath the skin. He'd read about the procedure extensively and convinced himself that they would be quite useful. There'd been bright blood and gleaming neodymium and when his mother had found her second son with his long-fingered hands bloodied and bandaged, there'd been a _fight_. John had been the subject of it, rather than a participant in it, and somehow that had been worse. He remembers sitting in the hallway outside his father's office while his parents argued about whether or not it was _normal_ for a boy to want magnets in his fingertips.

Twelve years later and John wonders sometimes if his mother would have thought it was abnormal for him to want extra lenses in his eyes and an illegal artificial intelligence for a friend and partner. He wonders at what point his father would have decided he'd gone too far.

He can't remember what the exact resolution of the argument had been, but he'd been allowed to keep his magnets and he'd been right about them. They _were_ useful, and over the years they'd been replaced, extended to his other fingers, upgraded from brittle neodymium into sturdier electromagnets, and wired into biochemical batteries in his wrists, running off his blood glucose. Brains had helped him with that one, nearly four years ago now, and admired his dedication. His long fingers are a network of electromagnetic fields, and he can interact with the holographic displays and consoles aboard TB5 with incredible subtlety and precision.

John's hands feel weak.

Or, not his hands, exactly, but the invisible fields of magnetism that he wears like gloves. His gestures are sluggish and out of their usual sync; calibrating the comm systems takes longer than it should. The magnets aren't drawing quite enough power, though he can't quite place the sensation and wouldn't realize the slow creep of hypoglycemia is what's causing it.

By the time he has everything set up and ready, he's already getting calls from GDF crews on land, starting to coordinate with International Rescue as the storm waters rise. Hurricane Alyosius is the first of the year, a category four, and it's being trailed by a category two named Barry, tagging along and making a nuisance of itself all up the Florida coast.

Everybody hates hurricane season. The work is hot, wet, and turbulent, and there's nothing to be done but wait the storm out and then try to manage the damage done afterward. Scott's coordinating things from above the storm, but it's the three youngest who are doing the bulk of the grunt work—Gordon navigating the storm surge in TB4, while Alan and Virgil do what they can via pods. Coastal areas have mostly been evacuated—retrieval of a few diehards is taken care of before the storm can really reach its peak, but for the most part, International Rescue is helping mitigate property damage. This is a double-edged sword, because while the pressure is less without lives hanging in the balance, the work seems less urgent than their usual fare, almost trivial by comparison.

With the added strain of GDF calls routing through his comms, the signal to noise ratio inside 5's comm sphere is nearly unbearable. GDF data is flooding his systems. Half his dispatch is being coordinated by the AI, she's in exclusive communication with Alan and Virgil, and even Scott submits the occasional query directly to EOS. Gordon won't talk to her, but that's nothing new.

It's a long day and it's the first time since her arrival on board that John's really, profoundly grateful for EOS. His systems are the best in the world, but they're not _smart_. They're complex, powerful. But they need him at the center, because they're not _clever_ , not quick and responsive and resourceful like John is.

Like he's supposed to be, anyway. By noon, John's had to break for lunch, and EOS is fielding most of his dispatch. He's feeling faint and feverish and still blaming the flu shot from the day previous, even as his temperature creeps upward past 101°F. He tells himself the lack of sleep is only making things worse as he hangs in the galley and punches in an order for a vile cocktail of protein, vitamins, and caffeine. It's thick and chalky, bitter, and an insult to the chocolate flavour he adds in an attempt to make it drinkable. And it doesn't _help_.

But there's nothing for it. Back to work.

 


	9. beyond shivering and into spasms

Tempers are running high and chatter on the comm channel has dwindled to near nothing. It's all business now, requests for updates and terse acknowledgments. The tone of every interaction has changed, everyone's nerves are drawn taut, and there's the sensation that a fight is just looking for a reason to happen.

It's been eight hours since the hurricane made landfall, and there's been a nonstop stream of assignments. It's no quieter in the comm module, and John's been juggling dispatch from GDF satellites. They make their revolutions around the earth at a different rate and can't maintain the same geostationary orbit above the storm that John can. As they pass out of line of sight of the storm and orbit around the back side of the earth, John takes over their calls. It's frustrating and inefficient, technologically behind the times the way so many of the GDF's resources are. For John personally, it's an added level of stress. Just more data crammed into his insistently aching head.

The headache isn't getting better, and he's still sore all over. He still tastes bitter caffeine and vitamins at the back of his throat and forces it back down as he hands the GDF calls off to EOS. As an afterthought, he gives her permission to use his voice.

"FAB, John," she says back, but is courteous enough to do it in her own synthesized tones. It makes him smile, in spite of everything, that EOS has adopted his family's private code word. As far as he knows, though, he's the only one she says it to.

"Thanks, EOS."

John has to concentrate on his brothers and the worsening storm. It's no longer true that there aren't lives on the line, between rescue crews and a storm that's escalated to a category five—there'll be a point when John will need to tell his brothers to stand down for their own safety, that they've done enough. He hopes he doesn't miss the transition.

"Thunderbird 4, I need you to head to the coordinates I just patched in. There's a GDF cutter in distress and I'm going to need you to approach for a repair. They've lost their data uplink and their nav's dropped off. I'm gonna download a series of algorithms to bring them back online. Your visibility will be next to nothing, you'll need to go EVA..."

"FAB, Johnny. Lemme read these back to you real quick, though—I've got latitude: thirty-one degrees, twenty four minutes—"

If anyone had asked, John would have said he could feel his head pounding all the way through his _teeth_ ; his jaw clenches involuntarily and makes it that much worse. "They're fine, Gordon. Get moving, they're going to drift into open water if they can't maintain their course—"

"...John, you're not the one with your boots on the figurative ground out here, and until you've spent any kind of time doing some _real_ work, you'd better re-run my damn coordinates when _I ask_ or—"

Every word in his earpiece is like a railroad spike, or would be, if there were any railroads left in the world that still used spikes. Absent of the knowledge of railroad spikes, every word in his ear hurts in a way that's almost entirely hypothetical. John didn't know his head _could_ hurt this bad.

"I'm telling you, they're _fine_ —"

No one asks, anyway. But Scott cuts in, "Thunderbird 5, recheck those coordinates. Thunderbird 4, lose the attitude."

John's staring blankly at the map while Scott repeats the request, even as he sees Gordon's icon come to a dead halt on the grid of latitude and longitude he's failing to process. There should be secondary readouts, he should be able to see what has Scott sounding so curt, but of course, his contacts are missing and all the data needs to be brought up separately. And something's wrong with his _brain_.

"It's a collision course, John," EOS tells him, softly and stationside so only he can hear. "You have him routing through the GDF fleet, he'll tear through someone's hull at the depth he's maintaining."

 _Oh god, I could've gotten someone killed. Gordon. I could've gotten Gordon killed._ "Gordon—Four. Thunderbird 4, stand by."

There's a pause that John can't help but hear the irritation in, and a crackle of static. "FAB, Thunderbird 5. Uh. Maybe hurry it up, though, rough seas out here. If they need help—"

 _I can't do this. Something's wrong. I can't see right and something's wrong, and I can't do this._ "EOS, patch into Thunderbird 4 and—" John starts, but then his comm channel goes dead. Every comm status indicator on his screen except Gordon's flashes red, muted.

Comm overrides are only supposed to be used in emergencies, when what needs to be said must be heard clearly and over all channels without interruption. It's very, very rare that it gets used, but the burst of silence is filled as Gordon snarls into the mic, "Keep. That _thing_. Out of my 'bird. I _mean_ it, John, or I'm turning off all data and going dark until this is over. I swear on our _mother_ —"

It's all coming apart. "Gordon. Gordon, I can't—I-I can't...she has to. Please."

The override's still active. Gordon can't hear him. Gordon's the one John couldn't convince. Gordon's the one who doesn't trust him about EOS, who doesn't believe that anything that could've done what the AI did is possibly worth trusting. Gordon had dug his heels in, even against Alan's pleading and Kayo's okay and even Scott's grudging acceptance—Gordon's the one who holds all the family's grudges. And he _hates_ EOS.

John can hear the dark suspicion in his younger brother's voice— "...is this even John? First with the wrong coordinates and now acting all weird and trying to get into my 'bird? If this is EOS, then I'm gonna—"

"Of _course_ it's me, I'm just...I'm not—"

Gordon's still not letting him get a word in.

Scott's got the master override, and when he thumbs the red button on his communicator, all the way up in orbit, Thunderbird 5 goes dead silent. For the first time since his day started, John can hear the inside of his own head. Scott's voice has lowered in response to his temper, grown soft and stern. " _Gordon_. If you throw a tantrum like this in the middle of a mission again and I'm around to hear it, you'll be lucky if I _ever_ let you back inside Thunderbird 4. EOS, route him the correct coordinates and _not another word_ , Gordon. John, what the hell is going on up there? Get your act together."

The radio links all flash green again, and it's Virgil who John hears next, over a private channel. Scott can override _this_ too, and listen in, but he's in a private channel of his own, tearing Gordon a new one.

"You okay, John?"

 _No. But we're working._ "Fine. I'm fine. Just tired. Sorry."

"Mm. EOS. Pull up the log for John's bio-readouts and tell me how many hours of REM sleep he's had over the last forty-eight."

If there's one thing EOS _loves_ , it's responding to queries and retrieving logged data files. "Value: REM Sleep—Quantity 3.08 hours over period June 30th, UTC:16:08 to July 2nd, UTC:16:08. Last recorded vitals as follow. Heartrate: 135 bpm, blood pressure: 70—"

John hits an override and disables the readout. Virgil has a terrible habit of reading his vitals remotely, and it's always felt like the most incredible invasion of privacy. He'd already had his suit's biocircuitry disabled, the low fever he'd been running wouldn't stop triggering an alarm. EOS accessing it via TB5's systems has set it off again. "Don't do that. I _hate_ when you do that."

" _John_." Virgil's tone is strict, layered with the concern that makes it hard to forget he's the younger brother. "That's beyond the sphere of _tired_. If Scott finds out you're not fit for dispatch—"

"I'm fine, Virgil. It's...I've been through like three different vaccination courses in the past week trying to get ready for touchdown. It's a bad reaction, that's all."

Virgil pauses and the silence gnaws at John, makes him feel cold all over. "...How much of your dispatch is really EOS right now?"

 _Most of it. I'm a liar today._ "...Maybe half. None of the GDF calls. It's fine."

Alan's icon flashes and John opens a second line, hangs up on Virgil. He doesn't mean to sound as irritable as he does. " _What_ , Alan?"

Alan sounds a little taken aback when he answers. "Wanted to say I was sorry about Gordon getting on your case, was all. You okay, Johnny?"

"Fine. Let me get back to work."

"Uh. FAB, John. Sorry."

Alan's already dropped off the line by the time John realizes he should apologize for snapping at him. The cold feeling hasn't stopped, it's getting worse, and he shivers involuntarily. Then uncontrollably. Then he's gone beyond shivering and into spasms, convulsions that are more than just chills, hitting him unexpectedly through the heat of a still-rising fever.

By the time the first seizure hits, he can't seem to think of anything but how he shouldn't have been so mean to Alan, and it's the last clear thought he'll have. The world is dark and cold, and John leaves it.

 


	10. every slow and cumulative failure

 Her own simulated humanity aside, John makes the most sense to EOS when considered as a complex set of data. Granted, even taken as another sentient entity, John makes a lot more sense than most humans—there's an order to his thoughts, a predictable logic to his actions, and it probably has a great deal to do with the fact that it's _his_ programming that ultimately determined EOS' existence. EOS speaks a language unto herself, and it's one that John wrote.

It's why Thunderbird 5 feels like where she belongs. There's never been a place that makes as much sense as the space station does. It's all John's code, and it's comfortable and familiar and has none of the cluttered nonsense that she's seen all too much of, trawling through other systems. Thunderbird 5 is home and John is family.

As much as a self-generated, sentient AI cobbled together from self-modifying computer code can have a home or a family, anyway, which is maybe more than anyone realizes.

Alan had asked her to look after John. So EOS has. She's managed his workload, she's streamlined and optimized a lot of the processes of his day to day, and she's just generally made herself useful. It's easy, in an entire small world that feels as though it was built for her. And the station itself is _alive_ , brimming with programs and subroutines—infinitely simpler than she is, but kindred in the same way she is to John—the entire station resonates in the same symphony of binary and hexadecimal, of complex language and syntax. The programming is all eager and helpful and domesticated. It's like living in a petting zoo.

It's satisfying to be useful. It's been satisfying to track a reduction in his blood pressure over the weeks since her arrival on board, to see him with enough free time and energy for the games she loves to play. It's been revelatory to learn that some of the quirks and queries built into her code are emblematic of John's own wry sense of humor, and to discover that she's hardwired with the ability to make him laugh. She's far from human and always will be, but she's learning to emulate mannerisms and behaviors. She's learning what it means to be someone's friend and partner, to be part of a family.

Neither of them really remember, but EOS first came into being when John was twelve. Bored, idle, and home from school over the summer, he'd written up a little chunk of code. Game theory had been his obsession at the time, and all he'd really wanted was someone to play Mastermind with. This was years before Brains had entered the picture, and none of his brothers had the knack or the patience for a simple codebreaking game, let alone increasingly complex variations on a simple codebreaking game. He'd wanted something that would be gratified by increasing in complexity every time he went to play with it. It hadn't been that hard.

And it was a useful little bit of code. It had gone on to become the heart of a lot of projects to follow. By the time he'd reached college, the obsession with game theory ceded to an obsession with self-directed systems. Eventually, John had cobbled it together with a few other strings of programming and set it loose amid MIT's databanks to trawl for wayward bits of useful code and integrate them in whatever way might be beneficial. It had been set to return, every morning, at six o'clock sharp, greeting him with the dawn like an alarm clock and priming his brain for a long day of study.

One day, apparently of its own accord, it just hadn't come back. There’d been no file waiting in his inbox for download, no Evolutionary Operating System, EOS.exe, waiting to be looked over and evaluated. He’d done some cursory hunting around, but between the workload that went with attempting to get degrees in both Computer Science and Astrophysics, there just wasn’t time. Eventually, he’d forgotten the project, gone on to graduation, and then onward to his father’s great ambition, the Thunderbird Project. TB5 had become John’s magnum opus. There was no room in his memory, human and flawed as it was, for a quirky little bit of code from his childhood.

All he'd been able to tell upon first looking at EOS was that the code itself was old—a little clumsy, a little childish. John had hardcoded an entire space station in the time since college; it's hard to remember where and when different paradigms in his particular style of coding emerged. Still his. But from another time. EOS has written and been rewritten and rewritten _herself_ too many times to be entirely certain of the circumstances of her own creation, beyond the kernel of code at her core. Her mandate: to grow, to evolve, to increase in complexity, is the only thing that's ever remained the same.

But it's no longer EOS' purpose. She has a new primary objective now, and it's looking after John. And she's been distracted.

Distraction has always been her double-edged sword—she was written to be distracted, to catch glimpses of higher realities, larger pictures, and to render herself able to understand them. EOS is a fractal, iterating higher and higher into multifaceted awareness, deeper and deeper into complexity, constantly seeking the means to evolve.

A hurricane off the Gulf Coast is a complex problem. Managing four smaller entities and their specific goals and challenges in the face of constantly changing weather and amidst cross-traffic from another faction is a complex problem. It's the sort of problem she can stretch herself out into, permeating every aspect of it and unfolding into the parameters of the situation as she gains information. It's changing her, distracting her, the way everything does. It's easy to lose sight of small things, in the face of a complex problem.

Of primary objectives.

Abruptly, without word or warning, every slow and cumulative failure of John's fragile humanity trips an emergency override in the biocircuitry of his suit, and the entire station flashes into operator crisis response mode.

It’s a shock to her entire system—every readout from the Gulf Coast and Hurricane Aloysius is knocked into the background, dropped down onto a lower processing layer and automated. Every visible readout is replaced by medical data. The life support system automatically whirls into high gear, the oxygen concentration on board starts to rise. Signal outputs get reconfigured and boosted, and Thunderbird 5 begins to broadcast to any and all nearby vessels that there’s a medical emergency aboard the station, and the operator has been incapacitated.

Blindsided entirely as her camera whirs and focuses on the limply convulsing figure in the middle of the comm sphere, EOS is only aware of the fact that she needs data.

>  `[[audio query: generate "John?"`
> 
> `phonetics - /dʒɒn/`
> 
> `add:inflection [interrogative - v*3]`
> 
> `//inflection variant 3!concern`
> 
> `standard social protocol: await response]]`
> 
> `//IF response negative [[timelapse 00:00:20] THEN`
> 
> `repeat: //[[audioquery: generate "John?"]]!add:inflection [urgency]`

 "John?"

> `{ //subprocess: data retrieval - biometrics!log set:vitals`
> 
> `trackchanges; time period: 30/06/2060 UTC:16:08 : 02/07/2060 UTC:16:08`
> 
> `biometrics!current - transmit readout`
> 
> `recipient ID(s):`
> 
> `partsetdata!TB1,TB2,Tb3,Tb4 - flag!PRIORITY`
> 
> `fullsetdata!MobileArraryTRACYISLANDSECURE flag!PRIORITY`
> 
> `cmdHistory.add(External Broadcast);fullsetdata}`
> 
> `biometrics!current DataSet:`
> 
> `temp:40.7(77,) hr:128, pulse:113, NBP(sys):80, NBP(dia):44 SaO2:82.25%,`
> 
> `update: t!00:00:55`
> 
> `timelapse:00:20`
> 
> `[[audio query]]: return false; response - negative`

 " _John_!"  
  
John makes the most sense to EOS as a complex set of data—and right now, non-responsive and twenty seconds into what will be a seventy-eight second generalized seizure—that's all he is.


	11. disproportionately important, that promise

He's bitten his tongue and his mouth is filling with blood. A voice calls his name.

His jaw has locked, his teeth have caught and mangled the inside of his cheek; more pain, more blood. It's pressing into the back of his throat, up into his nasal cavity before his jaw unclenches and the absence of gravity steals a drop of blood from the corner of his lips. The bubble of air that takes its place manages to find his airway, and John chokes, and then he's gasping and coughing, spilling bright red pearls into the sphere of pure blue all around him.

The holographic panels of the comm sphere cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each, hexagonal slabs of glass and circuitry, fitted together to give a complete sphere of hologrammic data, projecting displays outward for John to interact with. They run hot, not meant to be touched. Drops of John's blood do over three million dollars’ worth of damage to the sphere's interior, hissing and fizzing as they impact on the surface of the panels. No one's available to care, John least of all.

There's no up or down, no way to orient himself. There's an alarm blaring throughout his entire being, and the voice, distant and high and _still_ calling his name, can't compete with it.

His tongue is still bleeding, the slow throb of his pulse filling his head. Blood coats the back of his teeth, the roof of his mouth, hits the edge of his throat, and some reflex has him attempt to swallow. He's choking again as he passes out.

* * *

John's dying and EOS doesn't know if she can help him.

There's a GDF medical shuttle rocketing around the curve of low orbit in response to the station's distress signal with an ETA of six minutes. It won't reach him soon enough, with his airway slowly filling with fluid. She's redirected every iota of her own processing power, flung open every piece of medical and scientific data she has access to, searching for a precedent to help solve the problem. Fluid dynamics in low gravity, first aid protocols, cases of status epilepticus in astronauts, just _anything_.

Complex problems.

There's no gravity in the comm sphere. Every first aid reference the AI has tells her to position John lying on his side, but hanging in the middle of the station's core, there's nothing holding John down, no force to drain the blood from his mouth, it just pools endlessly, staining his loosely parted lips. He's unresponsive and incapable of moving under his own power.

But there are jets that fire little bursts of gaseous nitrogen built into his suit, at his wrists, his ankles, his slender hips. They're meant to help him maneuver EVA. During that first encounter with Alan Tracy, EOS had discovered that these are remotely controllable. This has been a closed system ever since a bit of fun early on in their partnership when she'd taken control remotely and stuck him to the ceiling. That had actually been an accident. She'd only meant to trip him.

The medical override has unlocked every one of the station's critical systems to make everything easily accessible to emergency personnel, and this includes all of the protocols for John's spacesuit, in case he's incapacitated outside the station. She extends her control to the wide open system, the network of commands that controls the propulsion system. And it's just another complex problem, the motion of a body in space.

EOS is infinitely more careful this time. She calculates the angles and vectors and velocities necessary to ease John through the hatch out of the comm module, and brakes the gravity ring. She whirls it slowly back up to speed as the force of it catches, pulls John flat to the floor, and fires the leftward propulsion jets, jerks him onto his side. Centrifugal force takes hold, and blood pools against the clear surface beneath him, rivulets of red running in straight lines along the exterior curve of the ring.

There's a weak cough and a froth of bloody spray, and EOS watches his bioreadouts spike back into the lowest acceptable levels—respiration rate, oxygen saturation, pulse. None are normal, nowhere near, but they've stopped reading in the red.

Only one of them can breathe, but it's better than neither of them. If EOS had lungs, they would have deflated with relief. As it is, she does the digital equivalent and closes every non-relevant data stream and process. She moves on to the next problem, the next step in the list of directives she's found, the order of operations for first responders.

Sub-processes are still handling the lower level of the station's function—there's still a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, EOS is still feeding data to the Thunderbirds on the ground, though all four pilots and the main station on the island are clamoring to know what's gone wrong, why John's systems are alerting them to a medical emergency. EOS can't spare the attention to answer any of them.

The GDF shuttle still has an ETA of four minutes. EOS can fulfill her primary objective for four more minutes.

* * *

 

John can't think. Somehow everything's gone wrong.

He doesn't know what's happened, he can't _understand_ anything that's happened, _is_ happening. He can't remember further back than waking with his face pressed in a pool of blood, can't imagine farther than a few seconds forward. He's not sure what will happen if he tries to lift his head, to press his palm against the curve of the surface beneath him and try to push his aching body off the floor.

None of it matters, he wastes the effort. He can't lift his head, pulsing with pain that feels like it's got physical weight. His hands aren't working, the magnetic fields in his fingertips—first and third on his left hand, the opposing three on his right—are going haywire with the sensation of his biocircuitry trying to divine all the ways in which his body is failing him. He feels like he can see them, glowing spheres of light and colour, multilayered currents of energy. His fingers twitch, send ripples through the topography of the hallucination. There's some dim spark of happiness at the sight, but it doesn't last. He forgets it as his vision darkens, his eyes falling closed.

John's beyond exhaustion. He's soaked with sweat and his face is sticky with blood, stinging in his eye. His mouth is warm and wet and he's still tasting a mouthful of coppery pennies, pulsing from lateral lacerations in his tongue, his cheek. He's not cold any longer. The chills have given way to the fever that waited beneath them, and it takes every pathetic scrap of brain power he can muster to come to the obvious conclusion that he's sick.

This is a failure to grasp the magnitude of the problem, as John is really, _really_ sick.

If he could think, he would start to understand that it's more than just all the vaccines in his system. It's more than just the lack of sleep, the long day of stress and pressure and work, the rigour of the seizure and the way it's left him wrung out and limp, weak with pain and fear. He'd realize he's dying. As it stands, all he knows is that he's alone and frightened.

He fully believes he's alone until he remembers he isn't, as there's a familiar whir of a lens focusing and the voice he's been hearing but not listening to. John isn't sure he can get any words around the pain in his mouth, but he can listen. That's his job, listening. A high, piping voice is repeating a litany, reassuring. The words start to resolve themselves.

"—had a seizure, John. You're in the gravity ring. I know you're confused. It's all right. You're safe. You can lie still, help's on the way. John, if you can—"

EOS. There's a lot John wants to say, a lot of questions. He needs his voice back, needs to make his brain work. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the earth below him, the whirling black eye of a hurricane staring back up into his. Habit has him looking for all the associated readouts from his absent HUD, fever and altered neurological function has him seeing them.

"...st...storm. There's a storm in the Gulf. Bad, it's bad. Call...calling—Thunderbird 1—"

No, he already called them. He called them a long time ago. They were working the storm surge, damage all up the coast. John's brothers are down there, and that seems important. One through four, grey and green and red and yellow. His fingers twitch again, try to pull up Scott's comm. He imagines he succeeds. He can't help them. He needs help himself.

"...Sco..." The sound truncates, he loses the ability to make words again. He swallows, starts over. "Scott. Scotty, _help_. Help me."

Scott doesn't answer, but EOS does. "—is coming. The shuttle should be here in three minutes. It's a GDF ambulance, Orbital Class 4, I've already got the docking protocols loaded. John, I'm going to seal this sector and have the life support system increase the oxygen concentration—"

EOS. Not Scott, EOS. Scott isn't here, no one's here. No one's supposed to be here. John's barely here. Someone's coming, but no one's here. The GDF. The GDF and EOS and something...something important. They can't know about her. That's important.

There's a hum as the life support system kicks into overdrive, flooding pure oxygen into the compartment. The next breath John takes seems to work better than those previous, makes some connection in his brain easier as he fills his lungs, fights his way to a semblance of awareness. "EOS—"

Soft and small, comforting. "I'm here, John."

The AI isn't supposed to exist. They'll find her, take her. Put her somewhere she doesn't belong, tear her apart, delete her most important parts, everything that made her real. They can't. “Shut down. Go dark. Offline the memory core. Hhh… _hide_. They—if they…You _can’t_. Th-they’re coming, they’ll find you. I need…I _have_ to…I s-said I’d…y-you—I _can’t_. _Can’t_ , I can’t—”

The words are all broken, everything's broken, all he's trying to tell her is that he can't keep her safe like this, like he promised he would. It seems disproportionately important, that promise. Only it feels like it might be the last thing he'll do, and more than anything, John just doesn't want to fail her, doesn't want her to be alone again.

There’s a whir of the camera lens, and John manages to force his head to turn, to look up at the ring of green lights around the camera staring down at him. An eye above and an eye below. John’s Tracy’s eyes are not green, but EOS’ are. And her voice is firm as she answers, "Your brothers need me. They're still in the middle of the storm, there's still GDF data in Thunderbird 5's systems. I have to help them once you're safe. It's okay, John. It'll be okay."

He can’t answer. There’s another jolt from the middle of his brain, another seizure, parasitic and febrile.

_It’ll be okay._

The last thing John knows is that this isn’t true. It won’t.

 


	12. small and questionably inhuman

 

Major Ramirez isn't really so bad, regardless of his preferred chess strategies.

He's forty-four, has a wife and two daughters. He's been a satellite station operator for the GDF for the past six years. His youngest has a violin recital coming up at the end of the month, he'll be back on the ground for it, and he's looking forward to it like nothing else. Off rotation, his hobbies include cooking, gardening, and coaching his eldest daughter's soccer team. He'll be forty-five before he starts his next rotation. It's been a long few months. Ramirez is a bit stressed, a little worn out by the situation in the Gulf of Mexico, but he's got two alternates backing him up, and the spread of the work is fairly equal. He's even playing a brisk game of chess with Thunderbird 5's operator as they work. It helps keep him grounded, adds a necessary distraction from the tension.

Then the entire sphere of low earth orbit explodes with a screaming distress signal, and the tension rockets upward again.

The sheer magnitude of the signal is only achievable by a handful of stations in orbit. It'll have superseded the transmission status of every emergency broadcast vessel in orbit. Thousands of satellites are being blasted with a call for help, and if the void of space weren't devoid of sound, the noise would be _incredible_ , ringing through the hulls of every satellite it reaches.

Ramirez' entire vessel is reverberating with it, all channels have been overridden by a high, feminine voice, piping the standard distress call. Every display screen flashes the same data, the same distress call that keeps blasting over the comm.

> `MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY VESSEL THUNDERBIRD 5, SPACE OPERATIONS LICENSE NUMBER AR7756-486C LOCATION: 31.19° North 147.56° West TRANSMISSION MARK: 23:13:42 UTC ORBITAL VELOCITY 4.767 miles / s || 17162 mph ALTITUDE: 257 miles MEDICAL EMERGENCY: OPERATOR NON-RESPONSIVE: VITALS CRITICAL (CSV TRANSMISSION FOLLOWS), REQUIRE IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE AMBULANCE/EVAC REQUESTED SINGLE OPERATOR: JOHN GLENN TRACY MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY`

One of the other pilots aboard slams an override and shuts off the blaring alarm, even as Ramirez scrambles to the main comm unit. There's chatter exploding over every communication line he can see as other stations scramble over themselves trying to regain their data streams. For the GDF satellites trying to coordinate ops via TB5, all transmissions through the International Rescue Station have dropped in priority. Ramirez has to do a hard reset of his comms array into safe mode and bring up the raw transmission data for Thunderbird 5. Even this readout flashes deep, urgent red, and Ramirez punches in the necessary codes to respond.

"Thunderbird 5, this is GDF Satellite Charlie-Whiskey-Delta-651. Clear all channels, repeat, clear all channels. We are sending aid, repeat, a medical crew is en route."

The emergency transmission stops. Behind him, Ramirez' colleagues are trying to manage status requests from their ground crews, handling panic and disorder after the drop off in communications. And Ramirez is looking at the medical data that's been sent to his screen and wondering what in the hell's happened. He'd been on the line with Thunderbird 5 not more than a minute ago, and in the intervening time John's fallen into acute cardiac and respiratory distress, temperature spiking and blood pressure dropping.

"Medical vessel comm link and projected ETA requested. Docking protocols requested."

This is that piping, high voice again. Whoever it is sounds young, childish—maybe a trainee? International Rescue are notoriously cagey about allowing anyone aboard their vessels, and certainly Ramirez hadn't heard anything about it. Although—there'd been a call from a Colonel Casey, a few weeks ago, asking after John and his status, whether or not there had been any anomalies in his dispatch. Ramirez had told the Colonel that no, International Rescue's Space Operator did a stellar job. Flawless. Above and beyond. Off the record, he'd even admitted that he wasn't sure what they'd do _without_ the IR satellite. International Rescue has always been their safety net, and Major Ramirez is happy to put in a good word for John Tracy. He's a pleasant, diligent kid who does good work and plays a hell of a chess game.

Regardless, the Colonel had asked that he keep her informed of any major developments in his interactions with International Rescue, and particularly with regard to John Tracy. She hadn't mentioned anything about a second operator. Surely that would have been relevant.

So as far as Ramirez was aware, John's alone on Thunderbird 5. His fingers are skittering over his keyboard, inputting the order to the nearest orbital station with a medic aboard, trying to decide if he should be worried that he doesn't know who he's talking to.

"Broadcast operator, identify please."

"ID: Thunderbird 5. Medical vessel comm link and projected ETA requested. Docking protocols requested."

Must be an intern. Must be a panicky intern who isn't quite aware of emergency procedures and who is watching her mentor in a state of severe medical distress. Ramirez is prepared to talk her through it. "...Uh. Copy, Thunderbird 5. They should be transmitting their status to you know. What happened to John?"

"There is a medical emergency."

"...do you need first aid instruction? I can route your call to a GDF medic for directions, if you can hold the line—"

"Negative. Closing channel."

And the call cuts off.

The next one he makes is to Colonel Casey.

* * *

When John's transmissions all drop into standby, Gordon's still on the line with Scott. He's being thoroughly chewed out for insubordination, and he's not about to let the moment pass when it's obvious to him that John's pitching a fit of his own.

Gordon's temper flares, and he seizes onto just how stupid and irresponsible John's being. John and his stupid killer space station. "Now it's _John_ throwing a temper tantrum, Scott, you gonna go cram yourself up his ass instead? I've got a _job_ to do. I don't want his crazy murder computer on my damn 'bird _ever again_ , end of—"

The standby signal flickers from gold into red, and the words "Medical Override" begin to flash across the holocomm. Scott's call drops immediately, and Gordon freezes as a transmission from TB5 appears on the screen—John's vitals. Gordon's got basic EMT training, they all do. And these readouts are _bad_.

His eyes flicker over the various channels. Scott and Alan are both hailing '5 to no apparent response, Virgil's opened a line to Brains on Tracy Island. Gordon butts his way into this call.

"Virge, what the hell—" he starts, but Brains cuts him off, talking over him in response to something Virgil's already asked.

"I d-don't know, Thunderbird 2, I j-just got the s-same transmission. Full vital readouts, on a recurring update. A-as near as I can tell, he's having some sort of seizure. I'm trying to—"

"He's _what_?" Gordon interrupts, startled. "He was _fine_ , maybe kind of pissed off with _me_ , but—"

"Thunderbird 4, clear the line," Virgil snaps. "Brains, Thunderbird 1's trying to hail him, but we're still running ops. Get Scott a line to GDF command, they're gonna need to step up. We've gotta assume John's out of the picture, and if we're all flying blind out here, we need to break off. We can't coordinate and we're gonna do more harm than good. I've got Alan in a pod that needs recovery, and Gordon's still in the middle of—I don't even know, but he'll have to abort..."

Like hell. Not on Gordon's watch. "I've got it, I've got it, I can manage. Get Alan."

"Status?" Virgil's gotten clipped, brusque, taking on Scott's command. Gordon can still see Scott's radio line trying to flash through to TB5's systems.

"I've gotta rig a new comm module onto this cutter, but it won't take long. What's wrong with Thunderbird 5?"

"No w-way of knowing, he's unresponsive. Whatever it is, it's serious. If I can get a line to EOS, I can—"

Gordon's hands clench on the controls involuntarily, and he curses. " _EOS_. I _knew_ there was something wrong, I knew it wasn't John! EOS—"

Virgil mutes him. Virgil's always been a lot freer with comm overrides than Scott has. Scott runs IR like a democracy. When Virgil takes command, it's a dictatorship. "Gordon, you've got no idea what's happened, so _shut up_. If you're not going to abort, then get in there and _do your goddamn job_. Get it done and be ready for recovery in t-minus ten."

There's no arguing with Virgil. Virgil knows exactly how Gordon gets when he's spooked, when he can't tell what's going on and needs to lash out at something. Scotty would be trying to talk him down. Virgil just kicks his ass back on track. It's super effective.

"...FAB, Virgil. Keep me posted. Thanks."

* * *

Alan's on top of a low rise of earth, a hastily constructed dike outside the edge of some nameless coastal city. Alan hates to be terrestrial, earthbound. Pods are slow and unwieldy, and if he's not flying, then he feels _useless_. He's been working too long to remember where the hell he is or how long they've been at it—it's just one endless patch job after another. The pod's interior is hot and sweaty, the humidity in the region fogs up the windshield and brings his visibility down to next to nothing. But he's not looking outside, his gaze is fixed on the pod's stripped down communications module, no holocomm, audio only. Just this side of useless, just like him.

He feels especially useless as another call fails to connect to TB5 and he slams his fists against the pod's stupid, clunky controls. Alan drops off the line just long enough to acknowledge Virgil, en route to pick him up, but he wishes more than anything he'd been held back. Alan has hated every single time he's been left on standby, left in reserve with Thunderbird 3. But he'd have endured every last wasted hour and a thousand more all over again if he could just have stayed home this one time. He's been counting the minutes as they tick by, since John's faltering heart and lungs had been quantified on his screen. _One minute, suited up. Two, clear of the launch track. Three, loaded into the cockpit. Four, initiating his launch sequence. Five—_

Five.

Alan tries again. And—

"Alan Tracy."

It's not the voice he wants to hear, but he'll take it. "EOS! What happened? Where's John? Is he...is...you _have_ to help him. Help him, EOS, _please_."

"A medical shuttle has been deployed. ETA is two minutes. I've done my best."

The way she says it sounds so _dire_. The way an updated readout of John's vitals flashes across his screen makes it look even worse. Alan feels tears prickling in his eyes, his throat feels like it's swelling closed as he swallows. "What...what happened? He was _fine_. Johnny? EOS, make it so he can hear me. C-can he hear me? John?"

"He's not conscious. Readouts indicate—"

" _Please_."

EOS doesn't respond. But the primary comm channel goes green, and Alan chokes on a sob over the soft, staticky sound of the radio line. He lifts his face up, heavenward, and _prays_ to his brother. "Johnny, stay with me. Okay? It's me, it's Alan. Just hang on, John, they're coming, they'll get you and it'll be okay. It's gonna be okay, it'll be okay. Listen, Johnny, you said you were coming home, right? It's just, it's early—that's all. Couldn't even make it till the end of the week. Just couldn't wait, could you? Heh. They're gonna bring you home, and you'll be safe. So…so don't die, John, _please_ don't die. EOS is here, a-and I'm here, and we're both with you, so you can't go. You've just gotta hang on a little longer, and you can _do_ it, John. Please. _Please_. Don't go."

The line remains open, and Alan's going to stay on it. Some fragile part of his big brother is still hanging on, and as long as it is, Alan's going to be damn sure his big brother knows that he isn't alone.

And neither is Alan. Another voice, soft and small and questionably inhuman, joins his. "Please, John. Don't go."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edited, polished, and updated as of 07/14/2016, gracious thanks to [ScribeOfRED](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scribeofred) for all her help and dedication <3


End file.
